National Cancer Institute (NCI)

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is the largest of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US federal government's primary agency for medical research. Established by the National Cancer Act of 1937, NCI has a dual mission: to conduct and support basic, translational, and clinical cancer research, and to coordinate the National Cancer Program. NCI's annual budget exceeds $7 billion, funding research across more than 250 US institutions and contributing to thousands of active clinical trials.

NCI coordinates its clinical trial network through the NCI Clinical Trials Network (NCTN), an infrastructure of cooperative groups — including ECOG-ACRIN, SWOG, the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, NRG Oncology, and the Children's Oncology Group (COG) — that collectively enroll tens of thousands of cancer patients annually. NCI also funds the Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network (ETCTN), Cancer Immunotherapy Trials Network (CITN), and the National Clinical Trials Network Operations Center, which supports Phase 1, 2, and 3 trials across solid tumors and hematologic malignancies.

Landmark NCI-sponsored trials include the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST), which established CT screening for lung cancer in high-risk smokers; the NSABP B-14 and B-20 trials that validated tamoxifen in hormone receptor-positive breast cancer; and numerous Children's Oncology Group trials that dramatically improved survival in pediatric leukemia. NCI also maintains the Cancer Genome Atlas and supports the Genomic Data Commons, which underpin biomarker-driven precision oncology trials.

Frequently Asked Questions — National Cancer Institute (NCI)