The education of new investigators is essential to our progress in the prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. The Tumor Biology Training Program provides a comprehensive curriculum for the career development of pre- and postdoctoral trainees interested in basic as well as clinical approaches to cancer research. A central feature of the program is its strong cancer focus and its clinical-translational interactions. State-of-the-art cancer research training is available in the laboratories of the participating faculty, while formal courses, seminars, journal clubs, and special interests group meetings contribute to a distinctly interdisciplinary educational experience. Over the past 5 years, the Tumor Biology Ph.D. Training Program has made significant advances. We have become a degree-granting program, allowing us to focus our training specifically on cancer and take full advantage of the basic and clinical resources of the Lombardi Cancer Center. Our faculty have developed more than a dozen cancer-specific new courses for this training program, and continue to do so. We have incorporated significant exposure to clinical concepts through courses, trainee involvement in weekly clinical conferences and seminars, and through monthly Oncology Grand Rounds that focus on translational cancer research. As our reputation has grown, so has our program, and each year we attract a larger pool of ever more qualified candidates. The T32 grant has allowed us to recruit the best possible candidates and provide them with excellent formal and laboratory training, as well as career guidance and development opportunities. While the Tumor Biology Training Program has in the past been exclusively a predoctoral training program, we now propose over the next five years to progressively add a postdoctoral component, that will make use of the numerous resources we have developed for our Ph.D. training program. The continued support of this program will allow us to maintain our mission of providing predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees with a broad perspective on cancer research and preparing them for successful careers in the battle against this disease.
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