The overarching goal of the Cancer Center is to shepherd new approaches to cancer prevention, detection, and treatment into clinical and population settings, where they can be tested and evaluated. Multidisciplinary programs -- which include lab scientists, clinical investigators, providers of patient care, epidemiologists, and socio-behavioral scientists -- facilitate this process by focusing research on relevant issues to patients and persons at risk of cancer. Collaboration across disciplines ensures that insights gained in the lab can move quickly and effectively to cancer patients’ bedsides and to cancer prevention and control programs.

UCSF’s investigators aim to test the scientific insights gained in the lab against the real-world standards of patient care and disease prognosis. Clinical trials of new pharmaceutical agents and gene therapies, as well as improvements on existing drug regimens and radiotherapeutic treatments, pose hypotheses and answer questions for both physicians and patients. UCSF researchers participate in national cooperative groups, through which widely available clinical trials can provide conclusive data on promising therapies. They also design their own protocols for studies that follow closely on lab research and provide “proof of concept” for cutting-edge approaches. Just as the Center’s philosophy is based on collaboration among basic scientists and clinical health care providers, ultimate progress in the struggle against cancer will come from collaboration among scientists and cancer patients themselves.