There are many opportunities for fellows to engage in research at Dartmouth. As the only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Northern New England, the Dartmouth Cancer Center is also one of 32 Lead Academic Participating Sites (LAPS) in the NCI's National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN). This gives fellows access to a broad portfolio of national cooperative-group clinical trials for each disease group.
Faculty serve as principal investigators on Phase I, II, and III trials conducted locally and through cooperative-group networks — spanning multimodality therapy, novel drug development, immunotherapy, cellular therapy, new diagnostics, and cancer vaccines. Fellows become familiar with active protocols and participate in patient enrollment and data collection.
The cancer center's investigators are organized into four research programs, any of which a fellow can engage with:
- Cancer Population Science (CPS) — environmental and genetic cancer-risk epidemiology, behavioral risk reduction, and health-care delivery research.
- Immunology & Cancer Immunotherapy (ICI) — immunotherapy and the development of new immunotherapeutic strategies.
- Cancer Signaling, Genomes, and Networks (SGN) — cancer biology from basic mechanisms through target discovery, validation, and clinical application.
- Translational Engineering in Cancer (TEC) — imaging, radiobiology, biophysics, and engineering applied to new cancer diagnostics and treatments.
Learn more about cancer research at Dartmouth
Working closely with faculty, fellows use dedicated research blocks to carry out a project and build the skills investigations require — critically appraising the literature, preparing a protocol, navigating IRB submission, and drafting a manuscript. Fellows may pursue clinical, translational, or basic science research depending on their interests.