Sarah Cannon was a television and radio personality, known worldwide for her Grand Ole Opry character “Minnie Pearl.” After receiving treatment for breast cancer at our founding center in Nashville, she offered the use of her given name to promote cancer research and patient education with a vision of offering patients convenient access to early detection, clinical trials and a team approach to cancer care.
The Sarah Cannon Story
Since 1993, Sarah Cannon has taken many first steps in the fight against cancer, beginning with clinical research. With the focus of offering patients greater access to clinical trials at the earliest phases, our founders established the first community-based cancer research program and four years later, formed the first drug development program outside of an academic setting.
Formally named Sarah Cannon Research Institute in 2004, its offerings expanded into communities across the United States and United Kingdom to form one of the largest patient-centric clinical trial organizations in the world conducting drug development at all phases, including first-in-human studies.
The expansion included establishing the first clinical trials program in the United Kingdom outside of the NHS, as well as the first private molecular profiling laboratory. Through its global expertise and reach, Sarah Cannon has been instrumental in advancing therapies for patients through new drug approvals for more than two decades.
Sarah Cannon has grown to become the Cancer Institute of HCA, committed to addressing every aspect of care from diagnosis through survivorship. Today, it comprises a network of partnering hospitals offering state-of-the-art cancer care close to home for hundreds of thousands of patients, a number unmatched by any single cancer center.