Dr. Michele Carbone insists he would not have taken his new job as interim director of the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i three months ago without promises from Hawai'i's hospitals and oncologists that years of infighting would finally end.

There is some urgency behind Carbone's appointment, as well as the need to reinvigorate the Cancer Research Center in a hurry.

It is one of 63 National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers. But its pool of grant money is falling toward the $10 million threshold considered necessary to continue to receive research funds from the National Institutes of Health.

In January 2005, the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i had 33 researchers collectively bringing in $33.5 million in research grants. By November 2008, the number of researchers had fallen to 12, and the total value of their grants had plummeted to $18.6 million.

By October, the value of the grants is forecast to drop again, to $13.8 million, unless Carbone can attract new researchers with their own grants and develop younger researchers already in the Islands.

"This group is too small for us to be competitive as a NCI-funded institution," Carbone said. "We need to double it up."

So Carbone has begun to rebuild cancer research and healthcare relationships that have been damaged over the years.

He could have started with the CEOs and heads of Hawai'i's major hospitals. Instead Carbone, a 48-year-old, seventh-generation physician from Italy, began where he's most comfortable.

He invited 15 cancer physicians from different hospitals to his home at Black Point, cooked up platters of eggplant parmigiana with spaghetti al pesto and mixed them with his own blend of Italian charm and charisma.

At the end of the night of Dec. 4 — just three days after he took over as interim director of the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i — Carbone and the other oncologists agreed that they and their institutions need to work together on cancer research, clinical trials and cancer care that ultimately will benefit patients who otherwise might have to make costly trips to the Mainland.

Then Carbone held separate meetings and more dinner parties — again featuring his home cooking — for the bosses of Hawai'i's major hospitals, and got them to sign off on a three-page "white paper" that refers to frustrations in the past but more importantly looks ahead to a new plan of collaboration.

"His personal charm is definitely part of all this," said Ginny Pressler, executive vice president of Hawaii Pacific Health, whose hospitals include Straub Clinic and Hospital and Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children. "He's been able to pull people together and get them to put down their swords."

A new era with new energy appears to have begun at the 38-year-old Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i with Carbone's appointment on Dec. 1 as interim director. Rather than bring in an outsider, the UH Board of Regents selected Carbone, who had been in-house for the previous 2 1/2 years as director of the thoracic oncology program and chairman of the UH medical school's Department of Pathology, a job that he has kept.

The enthusiasm that so far has greeted Carbone's appointment follows years of turf battles and feuds involving the Cancer Research Center and a wide range of forces that have included hospitals, oncologists and even the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine in Kaka'ako that houses Carbone's office and research lab.

Part of the new momentum involves a cancer symposium on Tuesday and Wednesday that Carbone is organizing that includes the 2008 Nobel Prize recipient in physiology or medicine, Dr. Harald zur Hausen, professor emeritus of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.

Rather than hold the symposium at the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i or at the medical school, the symposium symbolically is centered at The Queen's Medical Center, the state's largest private hospital, which also is paying some of the symposium's expenses.

Art Ushijima, president and CEO of Queen's, is on the search committee for a permanent director for the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i and has been impressed with the first three months of Carbone's tenure as its interim director.

"What Michele has been attempting to do is raise the collective importance of cancer care here," Ushijima said. "Bringing high-profile cancer researchers to this community is very significant so the community will have the opportunity to understand the significance of what these researchers do. It's one step of many steps that will be taken."

Michele Carbone — it's pronounced "Me-kel-ee Carbone-ee" — was born in Rome, the scion of 300 years of Italian physicians and lawyers.

"There are a lot of similarities between Hawai'i and Italy," Carbone said. "I feel home here, very much so. The personality of people is very friendly. A lot is based on person-to-person — same identical thing in my country."

A map of Italy hangs on the wall of his new office, directly across from an oversized sectional couch he brought from home.

It's here that Carbone sips espresso that he makes from a machine behind his desk, next to a boom box that plays Italian opera music throughout the day.

"The place is too small to fight with each other," Carbone said. "It's critical that we work together. You have to have respect of people and you must respect other people's opinions. The way to fix it is you have to listen — really listen. When people fight, there is no good reason, and there is no end to it."

Carbone's wife, Beth Chambers Carbone, insists that her husband — whom she calls "Miguel" — was focused on his research and work when he left the Cancer Center of the Loyola University of Chicago to bring their family to Hawai'i.

It was only after he arrived that Carbone realized that the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i had potential that seemed to be bogged down in internal and external politics, Chambers Carbone said.

"It was more of a puzzle to him," Chambers Carbone said. "Why are things like this? Why are there these secret agreements between certain people and all these other kinds of secrets that seem to be going on? It wasn't working for the Cancer Center."

Now Chambers Carbone says, she believes her husband can help solve the puzzle.

Carbone, a black belt in kung fu and tae kwon do, readily admits he enjoys all kinds of martial arts because "I absolutely like to fight. There is nothing more exciting than fighting someone bigger than you and putting him in a choke. You can only beat him through intelligence, not through strength. You learn not go give up, ever."

But Chambers Carbone said her husband's scientist/fighter persona gives way to the cook/collaborator when it comes to achieving overall success, without his ego getting in the way.

In the 20 years they've been together and through 13 years of marriage, "he's lost his temper maybe two or three times," Chambers Carbone said. "He's able to get people to get over their differences. He's willing to compromise and get them to see the other side of things."

One of Carbone's proteges, graduate research assistant Kimberly Theos, has worked with Carbone since he arrived from Chicago. And in the last three months, Theos said, morale has noticeably improved around the research labs since Carbone took over.

"He's helping everyone work together," she said. "He's trying to unite all the physicians at the different hospitals with the Cancer Center. He's trying to bring back ties and connections."

Theos said Carbone "knows how to balance his life, and I want to know his secret. I think it's the espresso and the opera music."