Collaboration
Cancer Center Holds Site Visit, Awaits NCI Review
The new Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center passed its first major hurdle with the completion of a site visit to evaluate the center for a National Cancer Institute support grant.
Official results of the Feb. 7 to 9 visit will not be known for a couple of months, but the center's leaders say the event went as planned. The site visit team included 24 cancer researchers from around the country and five NCI staff members. They will submit their report to the NCI's Cancer Center Support Review Committee, which is expected to assign a priority score for the center in April.
The Dana–Farber Cancer Institute has been an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center for 26 years. The expansion of the cancer center into a first-of-its-kind consortium linking DFCI with six other Harvard-affiliated institutions—Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital, the Harvard School of Public Health, Massachusetts General Hospital, and HMS—was formally announced in December 1999. The cancer center support grant from the NCI would provide partial support for the entire DF/HCC. The center has requested $10.3 million a year for five years, but the priority score will influence the actual funding level.
The DF/HCC is designed to strengthen basic, clinical, and population science research by allowing the center's 800 or so members to share resources and coordinate efforts in a more focused and efficient manner. The center has 15 disease- and discipline-based programs, including viral oncology, cancer cell biology, outcomes research, breast cancer, and leukemia. In addition, several core facilities have been established or enhanced to provide specialized services to researchers. Among the additions are facilities for high-throughput DNA sequencing, cytogenetics, measurement, and mouse specialized services. Supporting the collaboration is a Web-based intranet allowing members to access information about the center, its core facilities, and each other, as well as to exchange findings and discuss each other's work in a secure way.
David Nathan, director of the DF/HCC and president of Dana–Farber, told DFCI staff that "the site visitors were deeply impressed by the crispness of our presentations, the clarity of our vision, and the cohesion of our faculty and staff. They could see that we have pulled together a brilliant team that will truly move the field."
Peter Howley, head of the HMS Department of Pathology and associate director for basic science at DF/HCC, adds that "the site visit was a great success. The presentations of the individual programs and cores were well received by the visiting team. It was clear that we had succeeded in pulling together as a community to form a new cancer center composed of Harvard-affiliated institutions."
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