Cancer center receives grant

The Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego received $7.5 million from the National Institutes of Health to fund a newly established imaging center that is working to make better cancer diagnoses and evaluate the effectiveness of drugs, it was announced Wednesday.

The five-year grant will fund UCSD’s In Vivo Cellular and Molecular Imaging Center, which is focused on developing new ways to detect early cancers that require treatment and to monitor the effectiveness of molecular-based cancer therapies, according to UCSD.

“We want to develop diagnostic tools that define the cancer at its earliest stage, not just whether it is there, but its characteristics,’’ said Dr. Robert Mattrey, a professor of radiology at the UCSD School of Medicine.

The center is one of three similar facilities in the country to receive funding from the NIH, according to UCSD.