Building on basics

NCI Designation Achieved
(continued)

The university offers a constellation of scientific expertise unavailable at other cancer centers, including world-class programs in veterinary medicine, comparative medicine (which focuses on studying similarities among humans and other animal species), the biological sciences and agriculture and engineering. The result is a massive cooperative cancer research effort encompassing everything from studies of anti-cancer compounds in broccoli to naturally occurring cancers in companion cats and dogs.

While Kung built the cancer center’s basic research endeavors into a nationally competitive program (basic research is research conducted in the laboratory), David Gandara, associate director for clinical research, focused on developing a first-class clinical trials program. Clinical trials are conducted in human subjects, and test new drugs or combinations of drugs. For many cancer patients, clinical trials offer the best hope (see “Molecular Medicine” on p. 9).

An outstanding director, administrator, basic research program and clinical research program were crucial to NCI designation. But UC Davis Cancer Center’s unique partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory clinched the deal.

The partnership aims to turn defense technologies against a disease that is our deadliest enemy: More Americans are lost each year to cancer than died in all the wars of the 20th Century.

Jim Felton, leader of the weapons lab’s molecular and structural biology division, teamed with Moon Chen, a professor of epidemiology and preventive medicine, to co-direct a new cancer prevention and control program (see “Cancer and Culture” on p. 18). Dennis Matthews, a physicist who leads the lab’s medical technology program, was appointed associate director for biomedical technology for the integrated program. More than 30 other Lawrence Livermore scientists also joined the integrated cancer research effort.