Latest From Fox Chase Cancer Center

Our Mission: To prevail over cancer, marshaling heart and mind in bold scientific discovery, pioneering prevention, and compassionate care.

Fox Chase Cancer Center, part of the Temple University Health System, is committed to clinical excellence, research expertise, and community health. These initiatives earned us a National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation as one of the first comprehensive cancer centers in the country and one of only 51 in the nation to earn this full designation by the federal government’s principal agency for cancer research and training.

At Fox Chase, we diagnose and treat every kind of cancer and offer patients state-of-the-art and best practice treatments as well as clinical trials to cure their cancer.

Our researchers have won the highest awards in their fields, including two Nobel Prizes, a Kyoto Prize in basic sciences, a Lasker Clinical Research Award, an Albert Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research, American Cancer Society Medals of Honor, memberships in the National Academy of Sciences, and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Our physicians are also routinely recognized in national rankings, and the Center’s nursing program has received the Magnet status for excellence five consecutive times.

Today, Fox Chase conducts a broad array of nationally competitive basic, translational, and clinical research, with special programs in cancer prevention, detection, survivorship, and community outreach.

Underlying all this exceptional skill is unparalleled compassion. Our mission-driven culture leads each of us—regardless of position, both long-timers and newcomers, those involved directly in patient care and those who support the many other operations of our institution—to claim a personal sense of ownership in prevailing over cancer. The stories of our patients and their loved ones illustrate the high quality of care at Fox Chase and the superior patient experience delivered by our faculty and staff. It is something that extends well beyond medical treatment to include a level of kindness and concern, which is at the core of our mission to prevail over cancer.

More than a Century of Innovative Research and Care

Fox Chase’s roots reach back to 1904, when a group of Philadelphia physicians and businessmen concerned about rising cancer rates in the city founded the American Oncologic Hospital, one of the country’s first facilities devoted exclusively to cancer. Then, surgery and radiation were the only treatments for this set of complex malignant diseases, which were little understood and thought to be incurable, contagious and caused by trauma. In 1926, the Institute for Cancer Research was founded, also in Philadelphia, to dramatically increase the medical community’s understanding of cancer and its causes, treatment, and prevention. The two organizations merged in 1974 to found the Fox Chase Cancer Center, which was then designated as among the first comprehensive cancer centers by the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

In 1992, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) named Fox Chase as one of the four institutions designated to analyze all genetic data for the Human Genome Project—a massive international effort to locate and identify every human gene.

In 1995, we became a founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), an alliance of the nation’s leading academic cancer centers designed to ensure the highest-quality, most cost-effective cancer care based on state-of-the-art treatment guidelines and outcomes research.

In 2012, we joined Temple University Health System, which has further expanded research and treatment expertise and accomplishments.

Our collaborative environment, which has fueled many critical discoveries in the labs and in treatment, has been supported by a simple custom of joining together for afternoon tea in the Main Campus cafeteria. The tradition started in the 1940s and continues today, making the collaborative and interdisciplinary “Fox Chase Way” a very effective approach that has helped provide patients with treatment and support during the most challenging periods of their lives.