Cancer research – can the entity be bigger than the sum of its parts?

Cancer Research has benefitted from substantial expenditures by federal and nonprofit organizations. The resulting success in patient care has been uneven. Two lessons from the 20(th) century history of science suggest infrastructural changes that can boost success. We need to better organize big science, explicitly aiming for expedient clinical translation. In parallel, resource allocation should enable investigator-initiated exploration on the basis of productivity per research dollars spent.