UAB: Comprehensive Cancer Center

Why choose the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center?

Why? Because at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center our team is dedicated to providing expert, compassionate, leading-edge care. By choosing the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center you will be treated by teams of physicians who are leaders in their fields. At UAB, we have nurses, supportive care leaders, patient navigators and social workers who want to help you live your life to the fullest and will support you through your journey.

The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center has an international reputation for leading-edge discoveries, expert treatment and compassionate care. We are dedicated to taking care of our patients and saving more lives through scientific discoveries at the laboratory bench, leading-edge patient treatment and community outreach initiatives. As one of only 41 National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the nation, we have received the highest level of recognition for the work we do from the federal government's principal agency for cancer research and training.

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What does it mean to be a Comprehensive Cancer Center?

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has designated only 40 cancer centers in the country as "comprehensive." The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center is one of the select 40, and was one of the first eight centers to receive this prestigious designation from the NCI nearly 40 years ago. This designation means that at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center teams of experts are working to address all aspects of cancer, from understanding how it begins, to developing new treatments to prevent and conquer the disease and testing them in clinical trials, to providing exceptional patient care and support to patients and their families.

Only cancer centers conducting the most promising cancer research are awarded the Comprehensive Cancer Center designation. The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center is the only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Alabama and the Deep South. Choosing a Comprehensive Cancer Center like the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center gives you access to world-renowned teams equipped with the resources to fight cancer.

Our research programs

To achieve and maintain the NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center designation, centers must have a collaborative, broad and robust research program dedicated to investigating ways to prevent, treat and survive cancer.

Our programs are organized in the following areas:

• Cancer Treatment
• Basic Laboratory Research
• Clinical Research
• Prevention and Cancer Control
• Population Research
• Outreach
• Education
• Learn more about the National Cancer Institute

National Comprehensive Cancer Network - Founding Member

The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center is a founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN). Only 21 NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers are members of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), an alliance of the nation's leading Comprehensive Cancer Centers that defines and sets standards for cancer care. NCCN Member Institutions pioneered the concept of the multidisciplinary team approach to patient care and lead the fight against cancer as they integrate programs in patient care, research, and education. Learn more about the NCCN

Other distinctions:

• The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center research team is ranked among the top 40 in the country for competitive funding from the National Cancer Institute to support research - receiving more than $110 million in 2010.
• The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center has an international reputation for the development of monoclonal antibodies, targeted drugs that bind to specific molecules on cancer cells to interfere with cell function.
• U.S. News & World Report consistently ranks cancer services at UAB in the top 35 in their survey of "America's Best Hospitals."
• The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center currently holds prestigious SPORE (Specialized Program of Research Excellence) grants from the NCI in breast and pancreas cancers. The center is also part of a collaborative partnership with Johns Hopkins University and the University of Colorado-Boulder on a third SPORE in cervical cancer.

The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center is an integral part of one of the top institutions in the country. UAB brings world-class care close to home for Alabama families. U.S. News & World Report and other national publications consistently rank UAB's innovative programs and expert specialists among the best in America. For patients, that means they can trust UAB for the most advanced, most promising treatments—including some that are unavailable anywhere else.