Director's Update: September 9, 2003

In my address to the National Cancer Advisory Board (NCAB) today, I introduced an initiative that is in its early stages of development - a national advanced biomedical technologies initiative for cancer. This initiative is intended to harness the full potential of advanced technologies for the purpose of enabling cancer research and significantly improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. It could prove to have tremendous impact by providing researchers and clinicians with powerful new tools to prevent, diagnose, eradicate and modulate the disease at all stages, and help them to achieve our goal of eliminating the suffering and death due to cancer.

Our recent dramatic progress in understanding the causes of cancer - and many other human diseases - has been enabled in fundamental ways by advanced technologies. Advanced technologies - such as molecular imaging, computational science, molecular arrays, high throughput screening, bioengineering technologies, and bioinformatics - have enabled explosive growth both in our understanding of cancer, and in our ability to intervene against it. These technologies are also revolutionizing the entire field of biomedical research.

The recent worldwide threat posed by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) provides an impressive example of how technologies are enabling progress at a pace inconceivable even a few years ago. Within two months of the start of the SARS outbreak the virus had been identified, its genomic sequence determined, a diagnostic test developed (using a chip that incorporates the genomic sequence of the virus), and vaccine development initiated.

Now, if we can realize the full potential of the integration of science and technology, the best is yet to come. This integration must involve collaboration and partnerships among biologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, materials scientists, engineers, clinicians and experts in a range of other professional disciplines. And it must focus on harnessing new technologies like nanotechnology, and further developing emerging technologies such as functional imaging, for their application in genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, systems biology, population sciences, and the development of drugs and biologics.

The NCI proposes to address this opportunity by leading the creation of an initiative that will include major hub and node components working together through an integrated network. The hub of the network will focus on the development of specific critical, often unique, resources, such as bioinformatics and functional imaging, which can be provided to investigators across the biomedical research community nationwide. The hub will provide connectivity and coordination to the nodes in the network, and will facilitate access by the cancer research and care communities to the essential technological platforms being developed.

The nodes of the network are intended to provide excellence in a specific area of technology and/or offer unique capabilities in problem solving spanning from research to development and applications. They will link the most innovative biomedical scientists, physical scientists, clinicians, engineers, mathematicians and others in cutting-edge collaborations with each other, with people working at the initiative's hub, and with other key partners in academia, the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, and other government agencies.

We are at a magic moment in biomedical research that is best described by Andy Grove - one of the founders of Intel - as a "strategic inflection point," a time of opportunity that can result in exponential progress. Creating such progress through a more complete integration of science and technology holds enormous relevance to the problem of cancer. It will enable us to preempt the initiation and progression of this disease, and fulfill our goal to eliminate suffering and death due to cancer.

How best to design and develop a national initiative in pursuit of this objective will require considered exploration among experts across the cancer research and other communities. I am delighted to announce that NCAB Chair Dr. John Niederhuber will establish a subcommittee of the Board to address this question, and that Dr. Eric Lander, a member of the Whitehead Institute and the Director of the Broad Institute, will chair the subcommittee. This subcommittee will establish a task force that will solicit input and make recommendations. The task force will be co-led by Dr. Lee Hartwell, the President and Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Dr. Lander. The task force - as well as all of us at NCI - will do everything possible to rapidly engage a broad cross section of the cancer community to define the scope of this critical initiative. Your input into this initiative, as it develops, is greatly encouraged.

Andrew C. von Eschenbach, M.D.
Director, National Cancer Institute