The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has once again rated Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center (ACC) as Exceptional, the highest possible rating for an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center. This is the third straight Exceptional rating for the ACC. The distinction follows an extensive peer-review process for the ACC’s five-year competitive research support grant, which funds work across the center’s research and clinical care missions. The recommended funding level for the renewed grant also places the ACC among the top 10 cancer center support grant recipients in the country.

Members of the ACC have led or co-led studies that resulted in 10 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals of cancer therapies since 2017. The ACC is an international leader in cancer immunotherapy, pioneering the breakthrough of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy and culminating with the first-ever cell and gene therapy for adults and children with cancer approved by the FDA. ACC researchers also led the first U.S.-based trial of CRISPR gene editing for cancer patients. The cutting-edge research at the ACC spans the many different disciples of cancer research, such as defining novel principles of T cell response and cancer inflammation; forging innovations in radiation therapy (especially proton therapy in the Roberts Proton Therapy Center); advancing molecular and surgical imaging; and defining the impact of inherited genes that cause cancer, especially mutations in BRCA1/2 (led by Penn’s Basser Center for BRCA). Members of the ACC are also national leaders in establishing new intervention strategies to improve public health, advocating for policy change, and addressing cancer risk factors, especially nicotine addiction and obesity.

The Exceptional rating also signifies the renewal of the ACC’s status as an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, a designation awarded to institutions that not only meet rigorous standards for state-of-the-art research focused on developing new and better approaches to preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer, but also an added breadth of multidisciplinary laboratory, clinical, and population-based research, as well as substantial transdisciplinary research that bridges these scientific areas.