The National Cancer Institute recently renewed the University of Arizona Cancer Center’s status as an NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center and the corresponding support grant for a new five-year period.
The UArizona Cancer Center is one of 53 Comprehensive Cancer Centers designated by the NCI and the only one in Arizona. The designation is the highest awarded by the NCI, assuring that the center meets the highest standards for providing cancer care to patients and conducting cancer research.
Each NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center focuses its research, community engagement and outreach on a specific geographic area, or catchment. The Cancer Center’s Office of Community Outreach and Engagement characterized the catchment area to prioritize research focused on the cancer burdens faced by the diverse communities in the catchment area.
The center’s catchment area has a highly diverse population that is 50% non-Hispanic white, 39% Hispanic and 2.5% American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN). Individuals in the catchment area are affected by several significant cancer risk factors including obesity, low rates of cancer screening and environmental exposures.
The UArizona Cancer Center prioritizes five cancers of greatest concern to its catchment, including gastrointestinal cancer, genitourinary cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer and melanoma.
The UArizona Cancer Center emphasizes transdisciplinary collaboration around three scientific themes: cancer and the environment, cancer imaging and bioengineering, and novel therapeutics and preventive interventions. More than 150 members include faculty from 36 departments across 11 UArizona colleges.
Working with its clinical partner, Banner — University Medicine in Tucson, the UArizona Cancer Center has several research locations. The UArizona Cancer Center clinics, part of the Banner — University Medical Center Tucson, have two clinical and research locations: the Cancer Center North Campus and the Cancer Center Orange Grove Campus. These locations house comprehensive oncology multi-disciplinary care clinics, including medical, surgical, radiation oncology, clinical trials, supportive care services and prevention clinics.
The UArizona Cancer Center was established in 1976 when it received its first NCI Cancer Center Support Grant. The support grant has been renewed in every renewal period since, including in 1990 when the UArizona Cancer Center received the “comprehensive” designation for the first time. That status has been maintained ever since.
