# Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research

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

## TL;DR

The only US national laboratory dedicated to biomedical research, run for the NCI; home of the RAS Initiative and NCI's experimental drug manufacturing.

## Summary

Frederick National Laboratory is a federally funded research and development centre sponsored by the NCI and operated under contract by Leidos Biomedical Research on the Fort Detrick campus. Its RAS Initiative, launched in 2013 with Frank McCormick as scientific advisor, built the structural, biochemical and screening infrastructure that helped make KRAS druggable. The laboratory manufactures experimental biologics, cell therapies and vaccines to cGMP standards for NCI and NIH trials (its Vaccine Clinical Materials Program produced the first clinical lots for Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine), hosts the National Cryo-EM Facility, and provides genomics, proteomics, nanotechnology characterisation and AI-driven drug design through the ATOM consortium. It also supports NCI's AIDS and cancer virus, natural products and biorepository programmes.

## Fields

- Kind: Institution
- Last checked: 2026-09-09
- Also known as: FNLCR; NCI-Frederick; NCI at Frederick
- City: Frederick, MD, US
- Type: government
- Website: https://frederick.cancer.gov

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_National_Laboratory_for_Cancer_Research
- Frederick National Laboratory: https://frederick.cancer.gov
- NCI RAS Initiative: https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras

## Connected records

- fronts: [Drug Discovery Platforms](https://onco.cc/fronts/drug-discovery/)
- technologies: [AI-driven drug & target discovery](https://onco.cc/technologies/ai-drug-design/), [KRAS & RAS inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/kras-inhibitors/), [Proteomics & phosphoproteomics](https://onco.cc/technologies/proteomics/)
- targets: [KRAS](https://onco.cc/targets/kras/)
- companies: [Moderna](https://onco.cc/companies/moderna/)
- institutions: [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/), [NCI Center for Cancer Research (intramural programme)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci-ccr/)
- people: [Frank McCormick](https://onco.cc/people/frank-mccormick/), [Jay Schnitzer](https://onco.cc/people/jay-schnitzer/)
- bottlenecks: [Manufacturing cost and time for living and radioactive medicines](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-manufacturing-cell-therapy/), [The undruggable drivers](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-undruggable-targets/)
- trials: [NCI-MATCH (EAY131)](https://onco.cc/trials/nci-match/)

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