When Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation giving birth to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1937, he brought a decade of political wrangling to a close and created the world's foremost cancer research and training infrastructure. Eighty years later, with an annual budget of some $5 billion, NCI remains at the forefront of investigations into cancer biology and clinical trials that sustain cancer patients around the globe. Past NCI directors gather at Spotlight Health to talk about the NCI’s evolution and its role as a new era in personalized medicine dawns. Is a cure for cancer on the horizon?