A new partnership between the National Institutes of Health and five major drug companies will provide a total of $6 million to several cancer centers to find ways to increase accrual to early clinical trials. The five pharmaceutical firms involved in the pilot program are Aventis, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Co, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novartis. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) intends to award funds only to clinical and comprehensive cancer centers that it supports, because these institutions have the infrastructure in place to conduct early-phase trials at the community level. Applicants will compete for a share of approximately $3 million annually for 2 years. Half that amount will come from the NCI and the other half from industry. The effort is not intended to expand existing programs or systems at NCI cancer centers but to encourage novel solutions to overcome existing barriers to trial accruals and increase the performance of the existing systems.