The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Government's leading biomedical research agency. It was created to lead the Nation's investment in cancer research and training. NCI accomplishes this by supporting and conducting ground-breaking research in cancer biology, causation, prevention, detection, treatment, and survivorship. In addition, NCI provides information for the public and encourages adopting state-of-the-art cancer treatments into clinical practice.

Decades of work by NCI-supported scientists have led to the rate of new cancer cases declining an average of nearly 1 percent each year between 1990 and 1996, and the cancer death rate falling, on average, 0.6 percent per year during that same period. Powerful new technologies now enable us to detect and diagnose more cancers at an earlier stage, before they have had the chance to spread. And many people with cancer are living longer and with a better quality of life.

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