Research Labs

The work being done at Beckman Research Institute is the driving force behind the pioneering therapies being brought from bench to bedside at City of Hope. Composed of nineteen departments and divisions, Beckman Research Institute is able to advance the fight against cancer and other life-threatening diseases not only in novel research insights but also in patient outcomes.

This work is enabled by a wide array of shared services and core facilities utilized by our community as well as by other institutions and colleagues around the world. Our Chemical GMP Synthesis Facility is a state-of-the-art facility focusing on drug discovery and production. City of Hope’s ability to design and use its own promising therapeutics for both internal research and clinical trials is unique among academic institutions and makes City of Hope a leader in bringing leading-edge research from bench to bedside.

The Light Microscopy Digital Imaging Core offers support in obtaining and analyzing high-quality digital images for use in research, publication, and grant proposals. Our new confocal microscopes make City of Hope a leader in our region in digital imaging. Our Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Core utilizes a state-of-the-art orbitrap in high-quality mass analysis of the proteins and other biomolecules found in cancer cells.

Our Integrative Genomics Core provides high-throughput and microarray genomic sequencing services, along with data analysis services, to the City of Hope community. Our sequencing platforms, including our new PacBio platform, single out City of Hope as the only comprehensive cancer center in the country with this level of sequencing ability. These core facilities, along with many others, enable our researchers to produce the leading-edge research for which City of Hope is known.

New to City of Hope is the Hematologic Malignancies and Stem Cell Transplantation Institute. Established in the fall of 2014, this new institute is poised to lead the way in translational research in six centers of treatment: lymphoma, myeloma, leukemia, T cell immunotherapy, stem cell transplantation, and gene therapy.

Because City of Hope values translational research, we strongly encourage collaboration between clinicians and basic scientists. One example of such research focuses on the use of neural stem cells to aid nanoparticle penetration of tumors for effective drug delivery. Preclinical studies are focused on developing this therapy for use in patients with Stage III ovarian cancer. Collaborations such as these, that bridge the span from laboratory to treatment, help researchers at Beckman Research Institute to be personally involved in the life-changing differences our work makes.