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Inside the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center
by Robert Levy

An arial photograph of the Longwood Medical Area and other parts of Boston

Capitalizing on Boston's prominence in the world of medical research, the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center encompasses cancer researchers at seven Harvardaffiliated institutions.

Nostalgic images of solitary scientists aside, cancer research is becoming — in ways that are changing the very culture of science — a team endeavor. Researchers have often worked together on individual studies or experiments, of course. What marks the new spirit of collaboration is the breadth of expertise involved: laboratory scientists are joining with clinicians and specialists in population science on projects whose scope and ambition would have seemed unrealistic not many years ago.

Nowhere is the sense of collegiality on more groundbreaking display than at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), a new consortium of seven Harvard-affiliated institutions working on the problem of cancer. The center, formally created in late 1999, includes more than 800 scientists working in fields as diverse as cancer genetics, biostatistics, drug development, immunology, molecular biology, and more. Its member institutions are Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health, and Massachusetts General Hospital.

This summer, following a site visit by a team of researchers and cancer center administrators from around the country, the National Cancer Institute NCI) awarded the center a total of more than $50 million over a five-year period — funds that will support the center's "core" research facilities and lay the groundwork for an expansion of its programs.

"The Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center is built on the idea that by sharing resources and, more importantly, pooling the talents of cancer scientists throughout the Harvard system, we can undertake more extensive research projects and bring promising new treatments to patients more quickly."

— Dana-Farber President David G. Nathan, M.D., director of DF/HCC

"The Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center is built on the idea that by sharing resources and, more importantly, pooling the talents of cancer scientists throughout the Harvard system, we can undertake more extensive research projects and bring promising new treatments to patients more quickly," says David G. Nathan, M.D., outgoing president of Dana-Farber and director of DF/HCC. "The center's purpose is to make it easier for researchers to reach across institutional lines to interact and share ideas with colleagues in the Harvard medical community. Where a scientist works is ultimately less important than whom he or she is able to work with."

Paths of Progress, Fall/Winter 2000

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