The Cancer Center at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine (TTUHSC SOM) was established in 2008 to provide a center of excellence for cancer research for the School of Medicine and the entire South Plains region.
A major focus of the TTUHSC SOM Cancer Center is conducting laboratory and clinical research that develops new anti-cancer drugs for both adults and children with difficult-to-treat cancers. The Cancer Center hosts the Operations Center for a clinical consortium, the South Plains Oncology Consortium that conducts early phase clinical trials in adults and children with cancer. The Cancer Center also hosts the Operations Center for the Texas Cancer Preclinical Testing Consortium, a group of academic investigators that carry out preclinical testing of new anticancer drugs in laboratory models of cancer, with a focus on lung, breast, and pancreatic cancers. Through these consortia TTUHSC works closely with other institutions in Texas and beyond to carry out clinical and translational laboratory research in cancer drug development.
The TTUHSC SOM Cancer Center also hosts several national resource laboratories that support clinical and translational research for childhood cancer:
- The In Vitro (cell culture) drug testing lab for the National Cancer Institute Pediatric Precllinical Testing Program (PPTP)
- The Children's Oncology Group (COG) Cell Line and Xenograft Repository
- The Children's Oncology Group (COG) Ewing's Family Tumors Preclinical Drug Testing Laboratory