Cancer Center at Illinois

The Cancer Center at Illinois is one of the newest NCI-designated basic laboratory cancer centres and is unusual in being rooted in a college of engineering and a veterinary school rather than a medical centre. Rohit Bhargava's infrared chemical imaging reads tissue chemistry without stains; Paul Hergenrother's laboratory produced the procaspase-3 activator PAC-1 and other compounds that entered trials; Timothy Fan runs comparative oncology trials in pet dogs that inform human drug development. The Carle Illinois College of Medicine, the first engineering-based medical school, is its clinical partner, and computational and AI approaches to cancer are a growing theme.