Abstract The problem of cancer in the 21st century remains a national priority, and as such, offers a substantive long-term career opportunity for pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training. The Translational Cancer Biology (TCB) T32 training program seeks support for 2 pre-doctoral and 4 post-doctoral trainees for 2 years each and emphasizes bench to bedside research encompassing state-of-the-art areas of cancer research. Along with training in the fundamentals of cancer research, trainees are provided with individualized access to many areas of basic and clinical cancer research along with training in the responsible conduct of research (RCR), including rigor in experimental design and data interpretation. Understanding how to work in multidisciplinary teams and being familiar with “systems biology” and large data set analyses are also a major goal of our training program. The TCB T32 program overarching goals are: 1. To train top-quality scientists capable of conducting independent cancer research. 2. To foster the intellectual, technical and communication skills required to succeed in the academic or industrial arenas of today and in the future. 3. To provide an understanding of the basic, public health, and clinical problems of cancer. 4. To provide a training program that includes cancer related didactic and journal-oriented courses as well as a program that includes biomedical ethics, RCR, enhanced reproducibility, biostatistics, bioinformatics and data mining, analyses and sharing. 5. To provide training in grant writing, effective oral communications, and career planning. 6. To maintain a program-specific recruitment program attracting a geographical broad range of applicants including underrepresented minority trainees. 7. To have regular retreats to provide specific T32 opportunities for trainees to present their research and to develop the skills required to be effective scientists. Our training grant eligible pre-doctoral and post-doctoral applicant pool has almost doubled during the last 5 years. The ability of this training grant to bridge an existing outstanding foundation of basic cancer research programs with our experimental therapeutics programs in the Harold Simmons NCI Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, distinguishes it from a standardized general graduate and post-graduate educational program. We have 35 committed, well funded faculty mentors, with a dedicated group of steering committee members, along with Cancer Center administrative intellectual and financial support.