DUARTE, Calif., May 29, 2008 – The National Cancer Institute (NCI) approved a five-year renewal of City of Hope’s designation as a Comprehensive Cancer Center and its Cancer Center Support Grant. City of Hope is one of only 41 NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers nationwide. The NCI awards support grants to institutions that provide both excellent patient care and scientific research into cancer. Institutions that achieve “comprehensive” status, the NCI’s highest cancer center designation, must demonstrate excellence in programs that address prevention, training and education for professionals as well as the community the institution serves.
“The NCI’s Comprehensive Cancer Center designation and grant renewal reflect the high standard of our research and patient care, as well as City of Hope’s role in our community,” said Michael A. Friedman, M.D., president and chief executive officer, City of Hope.
According to the NCI, a Comprehensive Cancer Center provides superior depth and breadth of research activities in each of three major areas: laboratory, clinical and population-based research, with substantial transdisciplinary research that bridges these scientific areas. An NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center also conducts professional and public education and dissemination of clinical and public health advances into the community it serves.
The NCI grant awards fund formal research programs that foster interactions between basic laboratory, clinical and population scientists, as well as access for investigators to shared services and technologies that are necessary to their research efforts, and other scientific infrastructure. Grant applications must undergo a competitive peer review process that evaluates and ranks applications according to their merit.
“One of City of Hope’s defining strengths is our dedication to translational medicine that brings together scientific discovery and clinical care in the effort to develop better treatments for cancer and other diseases,” said Theodore G. Krontiris, M.D., Ph.D., professor of molecular medicine and emeritus director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, who guided the institution through the review process.
Krontiris recently stepped down from his role as executive vice president of medical and scientific affairs and Comprehensive Cancer Center director to return to the laboratory and continue his scientific research, which focuses on genetic susceptibility to commonly occurring cancers. Among his other activities, he leads a national study of sibling pairs affected with breast, colon, lung and prostate cancer in collaboration with the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group.
Robert Figlin, M.D., the Arthur and Rosalie Kaplan Professor of Medical Oncology, has been named interim cancer center director, in addition to his role as associate director for clinical research of the Comprehensive Cancer Center and chair of the Division of Medical Oncology & Therapeutics Research.
City of Hope was first designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center in 1998. This is the second renewal of its designation.