In 1989, cancer research occupied a growing space at the intersection of science, public health, and policy. Yet, for anyone aiming to map the contours of this work using economic statistics, the boundaries are, unsurprisingly, less than crisp. ISIC 7210—research and development on natural sciences and engineering—offers a statistical anchor, but its net is cast widely. It captures pure biology labs, multidisciplinary centers, engineering groups, and yes, the rising number of entities dedicated to cancer research. Teasing out these labs from the wider field requires a mix of documentary review and, occasionally, informed guesswork.
The first step is to assemble a list of organizations registered under ISIC 7210 as of 1989. In the United States, this yields a long roster, drawing from university-based centers, independent institutes, hospital-affiliated labs, and, less frequently, private research firms. The key, however, is to filter for those engaged in cancer research specifically. Institute names are sometimes a guide—cancer centers or oncology units are usually explicit—but many organizations house cancer research within broader biomedical or life sciences mandates. Analysts should turn to annual reports, grant announcements, and—when available—published research output to verify a primary focus on oncology.
A crucial data source is NIH funding. By 1989, the National Institutes of Health, particularly through the National Cancer Institute (NCI), was the primary funder of cancer research in the US. NIH grant databases, grant award lists in the Federal Register, and agency annual reports detail which institutions received cancer-focused funding. Matching these funding recipients with the ISIC 7210 registry tightens the identification of relevant entities. Grant abstracts, which describe project aims and principal investigators, can also help distinguish cancer projects from unrelated biomedical research.
Facility output is a more nuanced measure. It includes not just publications in peer-reviewed journals but also clinical trials initiated, patents filed, and, for hospital-based labs, even the number of patients enrolled in experimental protocols. Some research centers published annual summaries or “research highlights,” often citing both their funding streams and major outcomes. Aggregating these data points allows analysts to map a rough correlation between NIH funding and lab productivity—though causality is never simple.
One method is to construct a timeline, tracking NIH cancer grant awards alongside measures of research output for each facility. Do years of increased funding correspond to more publications, trials, or patents? Are some labs consistently more productive, and if so, does this reflect funding scale, institutional reputation, or other factors? Where data permits, it can be instructive to compare facility output per grant dollar—a rough, if imperfect, gauge of research “efficiency.”
Documentation matters at every stage. Not all labs report output in the same way, and funding streams often span multiple projects or centers within a single institution. Some NIH grants support large, multi-site consortia, blurring the link between funding and specific outputs. Every assumption—about facility identity, focus, or output metrics—should be carefully logged.
Despite these challenges, layering ISIC 7210 registration with NIH funding and research output data provides a meaningful map of the early cancer research landscape. The lines are not always sharp, but the signal is clear enough: a sector moving rapidly, drawing ever-larger investments, and shaping both the scientific and policy agendas of its time. For those willing to read the details closely, the beginnings of today’s vast cancer research infrastructure are already visible in the scattered records of 1989.