The Hollings Cancer Center (HCC) at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) seeks National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation via the P30 Cancer Center Support Grant mechanism to support its mission to reduce the cancer burden in South Carolina and beyond. As South Carolina's leading academic medical center, MUSC has been charged and supported over the past decade to build clinical, basic, translational and population-based research programs that address the state's significant cancer morbidity and mortality. Through the support of an NCI P20 Planning Grant (2001-2007), the HCC has recruited and organized 97 cancer scientists, representing six MUSC Colleges - Medicine, Pharmacy, Dental Medicine, Nursing, Health Professions and Graduate Studies - into productive and collaborative cancer research programs. These programs are: Lipid Signaling in Cancer, Cancer Genes & Molecular Regulation, Developmental Cancer Therapeutics and Cancer Immunology. A Cancer Prevention & Control program is in development. The HCC has expanded and continues to expand its research facilities and resources to enhance further growth. In 2006, the HCC completed a seven story tower adjacent to its original 85,761 ft2 building adding more than 116,000 ft2 in research, clinical and administrative space, and MUSC has committed an additional 62,000 ft2 of research space to the HCC in two new buildings starting construction in summer 2008. As part of this P30 application, five shared research resources will be presented: Lipidomics, Flow Cytometry & Cell Sorting, Cell & Molecular Imaging, Biostatistics and Clinical Trials. The HCC has invested $1.6M since 2004 into enhancing these five essential and critical resources. Given the rapid and ongoing development of research in the programs, the HCC has also invested another $6M in initiating the development and optimizing the function of seven other shared resources that will greatly impact on HCC's current and future programmatic-based research initiatives. These investments have resulted in a doubling of the HCC's extramural research funding base since 2003, currently $31.2M with NCI funding representing $12.1M. Accrual to therapeutic clinical trials has quadrupled in the same time period. This application demonstrates that HCC scientists have made significant contributions to the understanding of cancer biology and the development of novel approaches to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer.
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