The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is part of the federal government’s National Institutes for Health (NIH). The NCI is the main source of funding for cancer research and training in the United States and around the globe. It aims to find ways to better prevent, detect, and diagnose cancer as well as improve the life of cancer survivors.

The NCI visits and evaluates many cancer centers around the country for “NCI Designation” on a rolling basis that determines status and government funding levels. As part of this process, cancer experts from peer institutions visit and perform an extensive evaluation of each site. The subset it designates as “Comprehensive” are cancer centers the team has confirmed meet several specific criteria.

NCI “Comprehensive” designation is awarded to just 1% of all cancer centers around the country and is considered the NCI’s ultimate institutional honor. It is a recognition of the center’s scientific and clinical leadership, breadth of investigation in basic, clinical, and population-based science, and its ability to effectively educate and train the next generation of cancer researchers and clinicians.

Patients who come to an NCI cancer center that has been designated “Comprehensive” can expect:

• access to cutting-edge, personalized cancer treatments
• the possibility of enrollment in clinical trials, many of which offer leading-edge treatments unavailable elsewhere
• personalized and compassionate care from doctors who are closely collaborating with researchers that are exploring new ways to detect, prevent, and treat cancer.

MECCC is honored to be recognized for our unique and special contributions as one of the nation’s 56 comprehensive cancer centers.

As a cancer center with this designation, our providers, investigators, faculty and staff, and patients and friends in the community will ultimately benefit. We receive extra funding from the NCI for research, training, and outreach efforts, have even greater opportunities to collaborate with other institutions on research in the laboratory and the clinic. Empowered to further develop new treatments, new screening and diagnostic tools, we can continue to work to improve equitable access and outcomes for patients using evidenced-based medicine. The comprehensive designation also makes us more attractive as a place for top scientists and physicians to work.

Read more about our new designation, announced in September 2023, is in this press release.

Our cancer center was the fourth NCI cancer center to be established in the U.S. (in 1972) 
but this is the first time that we have been fully recognized as an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.

See our evolution in the Historical Timeline.

As a comprehensive cancer center, we oversee the spectrum of strong science to patient care.

• Learn more about the transformative research taking place in our laboratoriesand more than 320 active clinical trials.
• Learn more about the more than 200 types of cancer we treat.