In October 1999, the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute awarded the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center a five-year, $11.5 million dollar grant to conduct innovative ovarian cancer research through a comprehensive research program titled the Pacific Ovarian Cancer Research Consortium (POCRC). Led by Principal Investigator, Nicole Urban, ScD, the overall goal of the POCRC is to improve ovarian cancer outcomes, including morbidity and quality of life as well as survival, incidence and mortality.

The POCRC is a community-based, multidisciplinary, translational research program that involves clinicians, laboratory scientists and public health scientists from several research and medical institutions in the region. The broad based approach takes full advantage of the scientific expertise available locally and allows for the pooling of clinical resources, thus facilitating population-based studies despite the low incidence of ovarian cancer.

In February 2003, Dr. Urban and POCRC investigators submitted a competing renewal application to continue this program for 5 more years.  This renewal application was successfully funded with a new five-year, $11 million dollar grant to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that started on October 1, 2004.  

The Consortium currently includes 8 institutions, each one contributing substantially to the intellectual activity of the program. Consortium members include: