The Institute for Drug Development and an archive of institutional histories

The Institute for Drug Development (IDD) was founded in 1991 as the research arm of what was then called the Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC), in San Antonio. 

The IDD has been at the forefront of developing new cancer drugs for decades, with approximately 20 drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for cancer treatment. The program offers patients the opportunity to receive drugs that are only available here and that might not become available to cancer patients elsewhere for several years.

When President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act 50 years ago, the goal was nothing short of eradicating cancer. By launching the nation’s “War on Cancer,” the act dramatically increased funding for research. Importantly, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) was named one of the three original comprehensive cancer centers in the country.

For more than 137 years, MSK has made historic contributions driving discovery and improving patient care. MSK has a deep history of cancer research that has continually advanced the field and provided new and powerful ways for the institution—and the wider cancer community—to diagnose and treat cancer. Driving the effort is one of the world’s most dynamic programs of cancer research, with more than 100 research laboratories focused on better understanding the many types of cancer and the biology underlying them.

Fox Chase Cancer Center’s Talbot Research Library is named in memory of Timothy R. Talbot, Jr. but his true legacy is the entire cancer center. In fact, the notion of a comprehensive cancer center was Talbot’s innovation.

In 1957 Talbot succeeded Stanley P. Reimann as director of the Institute for Cancer Research. He guided the Institute for the next 20 years, culminating in the merger with the American Oncologic Hospital that created Fox Chase Cancer Center. He then became the new cancer center’s first leader.

January 2011 — “Ten years. Thousands of lives saved.” Seattle Cancer Care Alliance is using this tagline to help celebrate its official 10th anniversary.  It was in January 2001 that SCCA – the patient care arm of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, UW Medicine and Seattle Children’s – opened its new outpatient building and headquarters on Lake Union. The result today is the Pacific Northwest’s only federally designated comprehensive cancer center.

During the past decade the number of patients seen annually at SCCA grew by almost 40% to 25,211 in 2010, annual revenue increased sevenfold to $282.3 million last year and the number of employees more than doubled to 973. Through its network of community hospital affiliations, certain SCCA services for patients and staff are now available in 10 locations in Washington, Alaska and Montana.

Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, first called “The Cancer Institute of New Jersey,” was born in 1993 as the result of a P20 planning grant that was awarded in 1992. 

Just four years after opening, the institute achieved the National Cancer Institute (NCI) cancer center designation, a program that was created as part of the National Cancer Act of 1971 to recognize cancer centers that meet rigorous standards for state-of-the-art research focused on developing new and better approaches to preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer. 

In 2002, the institute was elevated to comprehensive status, the highest and most prestigious designation from the NCI held by only a few dozen such centers across the nation. 

In 1913, tuberculosis would kill nearly 150,000 people, more than twice the toll taken by cancer. A group of committed volunteers refused to accept this tragedy and established the Jewish Consumptive Relief Association (JCRA), a free, nonsectarian tuberculosis sanatorium.

After hosting several fundraisers, the JCRA placed a down payment on 10 acres of sun-soaked land in Duarte, California, where they would establish the Los Angeles Sanatorium a year later. The original sanatorium consisted of two canvas cottages and ultimately launched a century-long journey that would place City of Hope at the forefront of the nation’s leading medical and research institutions.

In 2009, the Hollings Cancer Center (HCC) attained National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation, a distinction held by only 63 other cancer centers in the United States, and the only such institution in the state. 

During a dignitary-packed ceremony on March 2, MUSC President Raymond Greenberg, M.D., Ph.D., called it one of the most important achievements in MUSC’s history. “Becoming an NCI cancer center is very difficult,” Greenberg said. “It’s a very competitive peer review process.”