The UC Davis Cancer Center Research Program represents the collaborative productivity of 181 funded investigators and another 80 faculty engaging the cancer problem. Cancer Center members are distributed widely across disciplines at UC Davis, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the USDA Western Human Nutrition Research Center, and the California Department of Health Services, Division of Cancer Control. In the most recent reporting period to the National Cancer Institute, UC Davis Cancer Center members generated more than $16 million in NCI funding, and more than $63 million in peer-reviewed and foundation and corporate funding for cancer-related research. Over the past three and one half years, the membership has published more than 4,000 articles in peer reviewed journals, many of which appeared in some of the nation's most prestigious venues of cancer research.

The research program is anchored in the UC Davis School of Medicine and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 2000, UC Davis and LLNL signed a formal memorandum of understanding integrating cancer-related investigators at the national laboratory with cancer investigators at UC Davis. LLNL collaborators are primarily drawn from its divisions of biological sciences and biomedical technologies. Dozens of significant collaborations have developed since that time in many aspects of cancer diagnosis, therapy and control. Highlights include dietary precursors of carcinogenesis, novel technology for small-frame proton beam therapy, supersensitive pharmacokinetics, DNA repair, innovative imaging technology, applications of new techniques for biodefensive detection of pathogens for cancer diagnosis, and radioimmunotherapy.

Cancer Center membership is also strongly shaped by the significant participation of scientists elsewhere in UC Davis including the Division of Biological Sciences, the School of Veterinary Medicine, the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the School of Engineering (the Biomedical Engineering Program), and the College of Letters and Science (chemistry).

The UC Davis Cancer Center achieved NCI designation in 2002. NCI designation requires a peer review of at least overall excellence in cancer research and provides unique infrastructural support to scientific leadership, pilot research grants, recruitment, shared research services, program development and clinical research.

Through the Developmental Awards Program, Cancer Center members are eligible to apply for intramural awards of up to $40,000 for research initiatives associated with the scientific programs described below. Through the Institutional Research Grants program, supported by the American Cancer Society with additional institutional matching funds, junior faculty within seven years of their initial academic appointment may apply for $20,000 year-long project awards designed to acquire preliminary results suited to subsequent national, peer-reviewed support.

Key strengths of the Cancer Center's research program include molecular oncology (signal transduction and DNA repair), cancer biology in animals (spontaneous tumors and animal models of human cancer), therapeutics (early and late phase clinical trials, correlative studies, combinatorial chemistry, radioimmunotherapy), cancer etiology, prevention and control (environmental damage spawned by toxins and diet, cancer health disparities, chemoprevention, palliation), prostate cancer (genetic mutations, androgen independence), and biomedical technology (imaging, biophotonics, radiation therapy). Each of these areas is highly organized into scientific programs with defined leadership and membership.

The Cancer Center supports its scientific programs and member investigations through a network of shared resources including gene expression, optical biology, mouse biology, clinical and molecular pharmacology, a specimen repository, an animal imaging facility, a clinical trials support unit and a biostatistics and bioinformatics group.

The Cancer Center is extremely well-developed for both clinical and pre-clinical studies. It is the nation's top accruer of patients to the NCI-funded Southwest Oncology Cooperative Group Phase III trials, and is a co-leader of the California Cancer Consortium, an NCI-funded alliance of UC Davis, the City of Hope, and the University of Southern California that conducts investigator-initiated Phase I and Phase II clinical trial studies.

Its world renowned cancer mouse biology program provides original models for breast cancer research as well as a full repertoire of custom mice models. UC Davis hosts one of the nation's seven primate centers for large animal studies. Its School of Veterinary Medicine provides an extremely high case load of companion animals with cancer, now seen at a new veterinary cancer center, and is only one of two facilities in the United States with a complete veterinary hospital and one of only a handful with a fully multi-modal clinical oncology program. The veterinary school and the Cancer Center are establishing a canine clinical trials program that exploits the high degree of genomic analogy between dogs and humans and responds to the high potential of dogs to develop metastatic disease.

The School of Medicine and the Veterans Administration recently opened a General Clinical Research Center at nearby Mather Air Force Base with a fully staffed and equipped inpatient facility.

In addition to further developing its existing research strengths, the Cancer Center is laying the foundations for advanced work in cancer-related nanomedicine, bioinformatics (it contributes at a strategic level to the NCI bioinformatics initiative), imaging technology, pediatric oncology, and metabolomics.

Over the past six years, the Cancer Center's patient volume has doubled; the center now receives more than 24,000 visits annually. About 60 junior and senior cancer investigators have been recruited to UC Davis, with more scheduled. The UC Davis Health System has invested more than $70 million in the cancer program, with the opening of clinical facilities in 1991. By 2010, the Cancer Center expects to have at least two clinical buildings and two additional research buildings.

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