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institutionsInstitution
Yale Cancer Center / Smilow Cancer Hospital
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.
Also called: YCCSmilow Cancer Hospital at Yale New Haven
Overview
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.
Location
New Haven, CT, US
Type
cancer center · Yale University
Website
Newsweek 2026 oncology rank
Not in top 300 listing used
NCI designation
comprehensive
OnCo score
#174 · 31 points (0 Newsweek + 15 NCI + 16 from 8 linked objects) · ranking
Research output
From OpenAlex, oncology works in the last five years (2022 to 2026, current year in progress); counted on 2026-09-17.
Matched to Yale Cancer Center, including child institutions. 852 works · 16,798 citations · 65% open access · 19% clinical trials · 1% reviews.
Oncology works per year
1502022
2032023
1662024
1832025
1502026
Most works
- Maryam B. Lustberg77 works
- Lajos Pusztai47 works
- Eric P. Winer45 works
- Harriet M. Kluger37 works
- Roy S. Herbst37 works
- Ian E. Krop36 works
- Patricia LoRusso31 works
- Melinda L. Irwin29 works
- David L. Rimm28 works
- Cary P. Gross28 works
Most cited
- Cancer immunology (PD-L1 biology)
- Thoracic oncology
- Head and neck cancer
- Breast oncology
- Early-phase trials
Amer M. Zeidan
Haematologist, Yale Cancer Center
Myelodysplastic syndromesAcute myeloid leukaemiaTrial design and outcomes research
Yale haematologist who led VERONA, the trial that asked whether adding venetoclax to azacitidine helps people with higher-risk myelodysplastic syndromes, and found it did not lengthen survival.
Barbara Burtness
Professor of Medicine and Co-Leader, Developmental Therapeutics, Yale Cancer Center
Head and neck cancerImmunotherapyCooperative-group trials
Led KEYNOTE-048, which made pembrolizumab first-line therapy for recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer.
Eric P. Winer
Director, Yale Cancer Center; President and Physician-in-Chief, Smilow Cancer Hospital; Deputy Dean for Cancer Research, Yale School of Medicine
Breast cancerHER2-positive breast cancerClinical trial design
Breast cancer specialist who leads Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital, and who previously ran breast oncology at Dana-Farber for more than two decades.
Ian E. Krop
Associate Cancer Center Director for Clinical Research, Yale Cancer Center
HER2-positive breast cancerAntibody-drug conjugatesEarly drug development
Breast oncologist who took T-DM1 and then trastuzumab deruxtecan from first-in-human studies to approval.
Lajos Pusztai
Professor of Medicine and Co-Leader, Genetics, Genomics and Epigenetics Program, Yale Cancer Center
Triple-negative breast cancerAdaptive platform trialsImmune biomarkers
Translational breast oncologist who co-leads the I-SPY2 platform trial and helped show immunotherapy works in early TNBC.
Roy S. Herbst
Deputy Director and Chief of Medical Oncology, Yale Cancer Center
Lung cancer immunotherapyAdjuvant targeted therapyEarly drug development
Lung cancer trialist behind KEYNOTE-010 and the ADAURA adjuvant osimertinib trial.
observationalJournal of Clinical Oncology 2019423 citations
EGFR-mutant adenocarcinomas that transform to small-cell lung cancer and other neuroendocrine carcinomas: clinical outcomes
It is the practical guide to what to do after transformation: treat it as small-cell lung cancer with platinum and etoposide, expect central nervous system disease, and do not expect a checkpoint inhibitor to help.
methodsJAMA Oncology 2017654 citations
A prospective, multi-institutional, pathologist-based assessment of 4 immunohistochemistry assays for PD-L1 expression in non-small cell lung cancer
Together with the Blueprint work it establishes that a PD-L1 percentage reports the assay as much as it reports the tumour, so the threshold and the antibody have to be quoted together.
Similar pages
- InstitutionDartmouth Cancer Center
Shares Roy S. Herbst, National Cancer Institute (NIH), Immune checkpoint inhibitors.
- TrialKEYNOTE-048
Shares Barbara Burtness, PD-L1, Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, Immune checkpoint inhibitors.
- Key paperKEYNOTE-010 (Herbst 2016): pembrolizumab versus docetaxel in previously treated PD-L1-positive lung cancer
Shares Roy S. Herbst, PD-L1, Immune checkpoint inhibitors, Non-small-cell lung cancer.
- InstitutionYale School of Medicine / Yale Cancer Center
- CompanyOnc.AI
Shares PD-L1, Immune checkpoint inhibitors, Non-small-cell lung cancer.
- BiomarkerPD-L1 TC score (tumour-cell score, SP263 and 28-8)
Shares A prospective, multi-institutional, pathologist-based assessment of 4 immunohistochemistry assays for PD-L1 expression in non-small cell lung cancer, PD-L1, Non-small-cell lung cancer.
- TrialComboMATCH (EAY191)
- BiomarkerPD-L1 IC score (immune-cell score, SP142)
Shares A prospective, multi-institutional, pathologist-based assessment of 4 immunohistochemistry assays for PD-L1 expression in non-small cell lung cancer, PD-L1, Non-small-cell lung cancer.