Comprehensive cancer centres and the war on cancer

Comprehensive Cancer Centres are now recognized as an important weapon in the war on cancer, but they had to fight a very different battle to become accepted by the academic community. Why were these centres developed? How do they contribute to cancer research? Have they achieved the aims for which they were set up? And how should they be improved? It is important to answer these questions because we believe that cancer centres, though in need of improvement, are vital parts of our anticancer strategy.