Initially situated off Oxford Road in Manchester, the centre moved to a purpose-built facility in Withington in 1932, and joined the NHS in 1948.

The Christie is the largest single site cancer centre in Europe, and during the 2023–24 period provided 102,000 fractions of radiotherapy and treated more than 60,000 patients.

[3] The hospital primarily covers a population of 3.2 million in Greater Manchester and Cheshire, but around a quarter of patients are referred from other areas of the UK for specialist treatment.

[9] Some of that money was used to buy land at Lorne Street, off Oxford Road, adjacent to Owens College and intended to allow the movement of the central Manchester hospitals out of the crowded city centre.

[10][11][12] A committee chaired by Richard Copley Christie, a lawyer and academic, was established in 1890 and, partly funded by a legacy of £10,000 from Daniel Proctor, a Cancer Pavilion and Home for Incurables was founded on the site in 1892, south-east of the eye hospital.

[17] In 1901, the Christie Management Committee agreed to the request of Dr Robert Biggs Wild to spend £50 on the equipment necessary to test the efficacy of X-ray treatment, after promising results reported from London and from three patients treated in the Physics Laboratory of Professor Arthur Schuster locally in Owens College.

[18] By 1905, Dr Wild had become interested in the therapeutic use of the newly discovered radium and experimented, once more with aid from Professor Schuster, on three patients.

By 1914, a leading local doctor, Sir William Milligan, had begun a campaign in the 'Manchester Guardian' to raise funds for radium treatment.

In 1921 it moved to new premises in Nelson Street donated by Sir Edward and Lady Holt, and became the Manchester and District Radium Institute.

[21] Ralston Paterson was appointed as Director of the Radium Institute in 1931, and went on, with a small hand picked team, to build a world recognised centre for the treatment of cancer by radiation.

[20] Among the team was his wife Edith Paterson, who started research work at the Christie in 1938, initially unpaid, and who became an expert in radiation biology.

[25] After Ralston Paterson's retirement in 1963, Professor Eric Craig Easson, CBE, was appointed Director of the Christie Hospital.

During Professor Easson's tenure as Director, many doctors from throughout the world visited the Christie Hospital to absorb its ethos and to learn its techniques.

[32] On 26 April 2017 a fire broke out on the institute's roof and rapidly spread through the building, destroying cancer research facilities and leading to the displacement of more than 300 scientists and support staff.

[39] Caroline Shaw, the chief executive of the trust, was suspended from her duties on 19 December 2013 while investigations were conducted as part of a disciplinary process.

It was alleged that she had made an improper claim for the payment of expenses for a retreat in Ibiza organised by the Young Presidents' Organization, of which she had become a member with the Trust's agreement.

[44] NHS England commissioned a review in 2020 into events at the trust after whistleblowers raised numerous concerns over a research project with pharmaceutical giant Roche.

She went on to say "The leadership of The Christie had a number of opportunities to avert this rapid review as colleagues in the R&I division began to speak up about their concerns.

[47] In 2018 the trust entered into a partnership arrangement with Hoffmann-La Roche which was intended to involve The Christie providing blood samples from 5,000 patients per year, with the company's subsidiaries, Flatiron Health and Foundation Medicine, building a "clinico-genomic database".