The Fred Hutchinson/University of Washington Cancer Consortium (Consortium), formed in 2002, is a partnership of: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center since 1976 and a CCSG grant recipient since 1973; the University of Washington; and Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center. The Consortium brings together more than 400 faculty with research interests in basic, clinical and public health sciences related to cancer, with total NCI funding of $73 million (direct costs). The goal of the Consortium is the elimination of cancer through more effective prevention, diagnostics, and treatment, deriving from fundamental insights into the biology of the disease. The extensive interdisciplinary collaboration between the three institutions in the cancer research disciplines of basic, clinical, and public health sciences affords new opportunities to reduce suffering and mortality from cancer. The Consortium faculty are organized into 13 productive research programs with emphasis in the Public Health (Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Cancer Prevention), Clinical (Transplantation Biology and Clinical Transplantation), and Fundamental sciences (Basic Sciences, Stem/Progenitor Cell Biology, Genome Instability & Mutagenesis), as well as programs that are highly cross-disciplinary (Women's Cancer; Prostate Cancer; Gl Cancer Etiology, Prevention, & Early Detection; Cancer Imaging; and Immunology & Vaccine Development). During the next grant period the Consortium will seek to: (1) Strengthen its clinical research programs and infrastructure to permit more rapid development of diagnostics and therapeutics; (2) Strengthen its presence in genetic/genomics; (3) Strengthen its presence in computational biology; (4) Continue its commitment to early cancer detection, including protein biomarker discovery and molecular diagnostics; (5) Build on leadership in research on infectious diseases and virology and develop a program focusing on infectious agents and cancer; (6) Continue to recruit promising laboratory scientists in broad areas of basic biology; and (7) Continue to encourage and support a focus on aging for relevant programs.
