On Jan. 22, 2002, Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach became the twelfth director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), serving until 2006.

While at the National Institutes of Health, he set an ambitious goal to eliminate the suffering and death due to cancer by rapid acceleration and integration of the discovery-development-delivery continuum. While at NCI, Dr. von Eschenbach committed resources to ensure the application to oncology of nanotechnology, genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, and other emerging technologies.