As the United States marks the 30th anniversary of the 1971 National Cancer Act, researchers look back on the advances made in uncovering the biological mechanisms of cancer, but also at the challenges of applying these discoveries to the clinic. As David Nathan and Edward Benz discuss in their Timeline article on page 240, the United States National Cancer Institute first realized the obstacles of translational research back in the 1960s, and began a push to move clinical cancer research into a more multidisciplinary setting.

This push led to Nixon's 1971 'war on cancer' and the first Comprehensive Cancer Centres, designed to incorporate clinical, basic, epidemiological and biostatical research under one roof. Nathan and Benz remind us that although there were many complications in this approach, there were also rewards. The story of the leukaemia drug STI-571 (Glivec), told by Janet Rowley on page 245, is an example of how a multidisciplinary team moved from a single basic observation to a drug designed to target the oncological culprit.

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