North Carolina's only public cancer hospital is now in a new building after four years of construction.

Gov. Beverly Perdue, University of North Carolina system President Erskine Bowles, legislative leaders and cancer patients planned Tuesday in Chapel Hill to dedicate the new North Carolina Cancer Hospital on the UNC campus.

The 315,000 square-foot hospital replaces an aging building originally used as a tuberculosis sanitarium. The General Assembly authorized $180 million in debt for the project in 2004. It took four years to build before the first patients arrived a few weeks ago.

The new building has triple the space for patient care, with 50 inpatient beds and 72 stations to receive chemotherapy.

There's also a new office building for doctors. The two buildings cost $207 million.

Bowles says a new cancer hospital will provide citizens statewide the most innovative treatments in the nation.

Perdue wore red in honor of Kay Yow, the North Carolina State University women's basketball coach who died earlier this year after a long fight against breast cancer.