# Yale Cancer Center / Smilow Cancer Hospital

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

## TL;DR

Connecticut's only NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centre, on the campus where nitrogen mustard was first given to a cancer patient in 1942, the beginning of chemotherapy.

## Summary

Yale Cancer Center was founded in 1974 under the National Cancer Act and is one of the NCI's comprehensive cancer centres; Smilow Cancer Hospital, its clinical home within Yale New Haven Hospital, opened in 2009 and now runs a network of Smilow Cancer Care Centers across Connecticut. Yale's cancer history runs deep: the first clinical use of nitrogen mustard chemotherapy took place at New Haven Hospital in 1942, and Yale established the first US university department of clinical pharmacology and chemotherapy in 1965. Current strengths include cancer immunology (Lieping Chen's PD-L1 work), thoracic oncology and EGFR resistance biology (Katerina Politi), head and neck cancer (Barbara Burtness), breast oncology under director Eric Winer, and a large early-phase trials programme. Yale's Center for Thoracic Cancers and the Yale Center for Immuno-Oncology anchor its translational research.

## Fields

- Kind: Institution
- Last checked: 2026-09-10
- Also known as: YCC; Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale New Haven
- Tags: nci-designated; comprehensive
- City: New Haven, CT, US
- Type: cancer-center
- NCI designation: comprehensive
- Website: https://medicine.yale.edu/cancer/

## Sources

- Official website: https://medicine.yale.edu/cancer/
- NCI designation: https://medicine.yale.edu/cancer/about/ncidesignation/
- History: https://medicine.yale.edu/cancer/about/history/

## Connected records

- cancers: [Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/head-and-neck/), [Non-small-cell lung cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/nsclc/)
- technologies: [Immune checkpoint inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/checkpoint-inhibitor/)
- targets: [PD-L1](https://onco.cc/targets/pdl1/)
- people: [Amer M. Zeidan](https://onco.cc/people/amer-zeidan/), [Barbara Burtness](https://onco.cc/people/barbara-burtness/), [Eric P. Winer](https://onco.cc/people/eric-winer/), [Ian E. Krop](https://onco.cc/people/ian-krop/), [Lajos Pusztai](https://onco.cc/people/lajos-pusztai/), [Roy S. Herbst](https://onco.cc/people/roy-herbst/)
- key papers: [A prospective, multi-institutional, pathologist-based assessment of 4 immunohistochemistry assays for PD-L1 expression in non-small cell lung cancer](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-rimm-pd-l1-assay-comparison-jama-oncol-2017/), [EGFR-mutant adenocarcinomas that transform to small-cell lung cancer and other neuroendocrine carcinomas: clinical outcomes](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-marcoux-egfr-small-cell-transformation-outcomes-jco-2019/)
- institutions: [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/)
- trials: [NCI-MATCH (EAY131)](https://onco.cc/trials/nci-match/)

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