UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center was established in 1975 with Joseph S. Pagano, Professor of Medicine and Microbiology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, as its founding director.
It was named after the Lineberger family of Belmont, North Carolina, whose Lineberger Foundation provided the core funding for the center's first dedicated research and administrative building, completed in 1984.[2]
The cancer center was previously led by Norman Sharpless, who was appointed to the role in 2014. Sharpless, an expert in molecular therapeutics, attended the University of North Carolina as both an undergraduate, receiving the Morehead-Cain Scholarship, and as a medical student. In 2017, he was nominated and confirmed as the director of the National Cancer Institute. H. Shelton Earp III, who served as director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center prior to Sharpless, agreed to serve as interim director after Sharpless left for the NCI. Earp was appointed on a permanent status in 2018.
The center's clinical base, the N.C. Cancer Hospital, was completed in 2009. In the summer of 2007, the North Carolina General Assembly established the University Cancer Research Fund (UCRF) to support cancer research at UNC Lineberger and the North Carolina Cancer Hospital with annual funding of $50 million.[3]
UNC Lineberger's members come from over 40 departments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, including UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Medicine, School of Nursing, School of Dentistry, the Gillings School of Global Public Health, Eshelman School of Pharmacy, and the College of Arts and Sciences. The Center has nine formal scientific programs: Cancer Cell Biology, Immunology, Molecular Therapeutics, Virology, Cancer Genetics, Clinical Research, Cancer Prevention and Control, and Cancer Epidemiology. In 2006, its members held over $170 million in annual research and training grants, including $48 million in NCI funding.[4]
