Kenneth H. Cowan, M.D., Ph.D.
Breast Cancer

Dr. Kenneth H. Cowan, M.D., Ph.D., is Director of the Eppley Institute and UNMC's Eppley Cancer Center.

A New York City native, Dr. Cowan earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y. and his medical and doctorate degrees from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Among his awards, Dr. Cowan received the Public Health Service Outstanding Service Medal in 1991. He has authored more than 200 papers for scientific journals and has been an invited guest lecturer for at least a dozen scientific conferences.

Before coming to Nebraska, Dr. Cowan was a researcher at the National Cancer Institute for 21 years. One of his clinical trials involved transferring drug-resistant genes into bone marrow cells prior to giving these cells back to breast cancer patients undergoing a bone marrow transplant. The hope is that the drug-resistant genes will allow patients to receive higher doses of chemotherapy with less toxicity.

He also has worked on taking genes that can inhibit the growth of breast and ovarian cancer cells, re-engineering these genes, and then injecting them back into the tumor as a way of getting these special genes into the tumor cells.

The UNMC Eppley Cancer Center is a NCI designated cancer center – a distinction held by only 55 centers in the country. Of the $34.3 million in competitive, external research grants and contracts awarded to UNMC in 1997-98, cancer-related research accounted for about one-half of that amount.

The UNMC Eppley Cancer Center was created in 1993 by the University of Nebraska Board of Regents in a move that united cancer researchers throughout the UNMC campus into a larger single entity. It marked a major first step toward Eppley's quest to eventually become a comprehensive cancer center, the most prestigious designation awarded by the NCI.