# Cancer Center at Illinois

Source: https://onco.cc/institutions/cancer-center-at-illinois/  
OnCo record `cancer-center-at-illinois` (Institution). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

An engineering-led NCI basic cancer centre at the University of Illinois, working on chemical imaging of tissue, new anticancer chemistry and comparative oncology.

## Summary

The Cancer Center at Illinois is one of the newest NCI-designated basic laboratory cancer centres and is unusual in being rooted in a college of engineering and a veterinary school rather than a medical centre. Rohit Bhargava's infrared chemical imaging reads tissue chemistry without stains; Paul Hergenrother's laboratory produced the procaspase-3 activator PAC-1 and other compounds that entered trials; Timothy Fan runs comparative oncology trials in pet dogs that inform human drug development. The Carle Illinois College of Medicine, the first engineering-based medical school, is its clinical partner, and computational and AI approaches to cancer are a growing theme.

## Fields

- Kind: Institution
- Last checked: 2026-09-09
- Also known as: CCIL
- City: Urbana, IL, US
- Type: research-institute
- NCI designation: basic
- Website: https://cancer.illinois.edu

## Sources

- Cancer Center at Illinois: https://cancer.illinois.edu
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: https://illinois.edu

## Connected records

- fronts: [AI & Computation](https://onco.cc/fronts/ai-computation/), [Drug Discovery Platforms](https://onco.cc/fronts/drug-discovery/)
- technologies: [AI-driven drug & target discovery](https://onco.cc/technologies/ai-drug-design/), [Optical & fluorescence imaging](https://onco.cc/technologies/optical-imaging/)
- people: [Rohit Bhargava](https://onco.cc/people/rohit-bhargava/)
- bottlenecks: [Lab models that fail to predict what happens in patients](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-preclinical-models/), [The valley of death between lab and product](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/)
- institutions: [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/)
- collections: [NCI-Designated Cancer Centers](https://onco.cc/collections/nci-cancer-centers/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/cancer-center-at-illinois.json