UPDATED story. Original version posted at 8 p.m. Tuesday.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A $17 million gift to University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital is local proof of the emerging attention being given to treating the medical and social needs of adolescent and young adult cancer patients, a group often caught between pediatric and adult oncology.

UH leaders on Tuesday introduced Char and Chuck Fowler and their daughters, Holley Martens and Chann Spellman, as the benefactors of Rainbow's new Angie Fowler Child & Young Adult Cancer Institute. Their gift, in memory of the Fowlers' daughter Angie, who died of complications of melanoma in 1983, is the largest individual donation in Rainbow's history and part of UH's $1 billion comprehensive fund-raising campaign, publicly launched late last year.

The Fowlers, of Lyndhurst, say they hope their gift will help attract more research geared toward the adolescent and young adult, or AYA, cancer patients -- generally recognized as those ages 13 to 29. Patients in their 20s are treated both at Rainbow and at UH Seidman Cancer Center.

The institute will include a new outpatient treatment facility, to be located on an upper floor of Rainbow. Currently, all pediatric and adult outpatients are treated on the sixth floor of the Bolwell Health Center at UH.

The inpatient areas for oncology and blood disorders, on the second floor of Rainbow, will expand to accommodate 10 more beds, bringing the total to 30.

A rooftop garden and other areas with space for workout rooms, Wii games, computers, art and music therapy and quiet spaces, also will be created with young-adult patient needs in mind.

Work on the renovations will begin in the next few months.

"Ultimately the goal for us is to enhance how we deliver care," said Dr. John Letterio, chief of hematology/oncology at Rainbow. Letterio will serve as chairman of the new institute.

The medical challenges of treating AYA cancer patients are immense, he said.

"Over the last several decades, we've had significant improvements in overall outcomes in our youngest patients," he said. "And at the same time, we've made great strides in survival rates for some of our older adult patients."

But AYA patients have not experienced the same improvements -- and oncologists aren't really sure why, Letterio said.

"Some of it may have to do with the biology of cancers that happen in this age group," he said.

The Fowlers, both 65, are high school sweethearts from Indiana who moved to the Cleveland area in 1988. Chuck Fowler is chief executive of Fairmount Minerals in Chardon, a global supplier of purified industrial sands.

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The weekend before Thanksgiving 1982, Angie Fowler -- remembered by her parents as an outgoing girl with a big smile who loved art -- was diagnosed with melanoma. Angie was 14.

She died the following June. The gift in Angie's memory was announced on what would have been her 43rd birthday.

Because Angie's diagnosis was rare at that time, the family's search for a cancer program with a treatment protocol led them to travel from their home in suburban Chicago to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The medical care Angie received and the people who gave it were wonderful, the Fowlers said. But the overcrowded patient rooms and outpatient areas dominated by adults were frustrating.

"Going into it initially, you just want her to get better, you want something to work. You're not thinking about a lot of things "[beyond that]," said Char Fowler, who recalled sleeping on the floor of her daughter's hospital room.

Angie wasn't able to go outside and she had no age-appropriate activities available to pass the time, Char Fowler said. "It's hard what you're going through anyway, and when you're in kind of dismal surroundings it's really sad."

It's important for adolescents and young adults to be treated as a special group, Chuck Fowler said. "Getting [the patients] into a center of their own, out of pediatric and out of adult, will really enhance the outcomes."

Earlier this year, the Journal of Adolescent & Young Adult Oncology published its inaugural edition. It is the official journal of the newly-formed Society for Adolescent & Young Adult Oncology.

The first issue of the journal, edited by Dr. Leonard Sender, director of clinical oncology services at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center, includes a 10-point International Charter of Rights for Young People with Cancer.

"We need to educate physicians who take care of patients," said Sender, who is also involved in two other AYA-focused groups, the I'm Too Young for This! Cancer Foundation and SeventyK (the name comes from the 70,000 new cancer diagnoses each year in people ages 15-39).

"Teenagers don't always go to pediatric hospitals. In fact, a lot of the time they go to the adult hospital. About 40 percent of patients between 16-21 don't end up at an appropriate facility that really has the expertise."

In 2007, the Fowlers gave $1 million to Rainbow to help improve research in AYA cancers. That first gift allowed Rainbow to recruit Dr. Joe Matloub, a nationally-known expert in AYA cancers, as director of pediatric hematology/oncology.

But the couple wanted to do even more.

Five years ago, the Fowlers and Letterio, newly arrived at UH, embarked on the first of more than a half-dozen trips to top cancer centers across the country. From the best practices they observed, the Fowlers set out to help transform the experience of older Rainbow patients.

Part of improving that care is providing better access to clinical trials. Mirroring a national trend, Rainbow patients over age 15 have historically lagged in their enrollment in clinical trials, very few of which are developed specifically for that age group, Letterio said.

Only 2 percent of all AYA patients at Rainbow participate in a clinical trial, compared to more than 85 percent of patients 14 and under, he said.

"That is a big part of this new institute," Letterio said. "Some of that has to do with driving more investigator-initiated trials [and] collaborating and engaging with other centers around the country to bring the latest therapies here to Cleveland."

Another aspect is encouraging more communication between pediatric oncologists and their adult counterparts at the Seidman Cancer Center to identify trials that may benefit an adolescent or young adult patient who is caught in between the two age groups.

More clinical trials and more research are the key, Chuck Fowler said.

"It's nice to [renovate] a building," he said. "It's nice to make it comfortable, but a cure is what you really are looking for."