Director's Welcome

Welcome to Moores Cancer Center at University of California San Diego. We are proud to be one of just 53 comprehensive cancer centers out of 1,500 nationwide designated by the National Cancer Institute to help lead and shape our nation’s progress against cancer.

As an NCI-designated comprehensive center, we strive to serve as driver and catalyst for eradicating cancer locally and globally through exceptional research, care, and education.. We are a consortium cancer center, leveraging the partnerships between the UCSD: encompassing 14 departments (12 clinical, 2 basic sciences), 3 professional schools (School of Medicine, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity), UCSD Health oncology hospitals and clinics; the basic and public health research and outreach of San Diego State University, and the basic and translational research of the La Jolla Institute of Immunology. 

We actively engage our community to inform our research and then bring the discoveries from our laboratories to the patient bedside and back to the community. Moores Cancer Center is dedicated to developing methods to eliminate health disparities and ensure equal access to cutting-edge medical treatments.

Our multidisciplinary research teams partner across disease types to use team science to solve the unsolvable. Surgical oncologists, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists, nurse navigators and a host of others meet each week to discuss treatment plans for each patient. This level of teamwork and communication provides the highest-quality coordinated, individualized care – all culminating into better outcomes for our patients.

We are proud to be part of the community and appreciate the support we receive. Together, we can find the best ways to prevent, detect, treat, and regain health after a cancer diagnosis and improve outcomes for our local communities here and across the world.

Joe Califano, MD

Director, Moores Cancer Center