The UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center is among the newest
of the NCI–designated cancer centers (1999), but it already ranks first among the
ten centers in California in the size of its NCI core grant. Formerly the UCSF
Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Center was renamed in November 2007 in tribute
to a Bay Area resident who has inspired individuals to make a difference in their
communities and beyond.
Unique within the University of California in focusing solely on biomedical
research and graduate health–science education, UCSF's uniqueness extends to a
highly distributed geographic presence, with faculty and researchers based at
five principal campuses and numerous satellite locations. The newest campus is
UCSF/Mission Bay, a $1.5 billion investment and the largest research university
expansion in the nation. At Mission Bay, the Center is constructing an additional
160,000–square–foot building for laboratory–based research
(occupancy Fall 2008), which will enable an expansion of programs focusing on
cancers of the prostate, kidney, and brain. The Mission Bay campus will also
be the home of a new cancer hospital, currently under planning and development.
Approximately half of the Center's multidisciplinary programs
are disease–focused and half are cross–cutting programs in genetics,
immunity, signaling, tobacco control, and society/diversity/disparities. The Center
is home to three NCI SPORE grants, for breast, prostate, and brain tumor.
Frank McCormick, Ph.D., F.R.S., has led the UCSF center since 1997
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