Cancer Research Training and Career Development
Goal
The Challenge
Progress Toward Meeting the Challenge
2003 Plan and Budget Increase Request
Goal
Prepare a stable, diverse cadre of scientists to work together and use technologies for building knowledge and translating discoveries into application.
The Challenge
Training and career development for the next generation of scientists remains one of our most important challenges. The scientists of the future will need to be:
- More versatile in their use of new technologies
- Able to work in teams to understand the complicated environmental, lifestyle, genetic, and molecular variables contributing to human cancers
- Better prepared to translate discoveries into public benefit
We need to implement and sustain multiple long-term strategies to attract the most talented individuals to cancer research.
- We need to create a stable cadre of well trained technical, biological, behavioral, medical, and public health scientists dedicated to the cancer research enterprise.
- As the interdisciplinary environment increasingly becomes a way of life for researchers, we need to ensure that scientists can and will work together effectively to solve problems.
Our success will depend upon our ability to:
- Move beyond traditional educational and research cultures
- Overcome health financing constraints
- Address socioeconomic inequities that have proven to be barriers to progress in the past
The theme for the future is to train scientists to work on problems as integrated, multidisciplinary teams.
To meet these challenges, we must continue to implement training and career development strategies to address a number of crucial issues.
- More adequately prepare basic scientists and provide them with more attractive career paths. By providing basic scientists in training with the background to conduct research directly related to human cancer and preparing them to collaborate on multidisciplinary studies with clinical and population scientists, NCI can provide them with the skills to be successful contributors to cancer research teams. Moreover, increasing trainees' stipends to levels more reflective of their education and skills will help ensure that careers in basic science will continue to remain attractive.
- Reverse the migration of talented and creative physicians from research to practice. This is the single most threatening consequence to cancer research from the shifting economics of the health care system. We must use more effective means to train clinical investigators and ensure they have protected time to conduct the patient-oriented research that ultimately will translate basic discoveries into better methods for cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. These investigators must receive the necessary intensive training and education that guarantees informed consent and provides maximum safety for patients participating in research.
- Increase the numbers and stabilize the careers of cancer prevention, control, population, behavioral, and public health scientists. The discoveries of scientists dedicated to prevention, early detection, behavior modification, and risk factor analysis will have a major impact on reducing future cancer incidence and mortality. We must develop better ways to train these scientists to function in interdisciplinary research settings and work effectively with patient-oriented and basic scientists. We also must provide these scientists with protected time in which to conduct research.
- Create a research community that is ethnically and racially diverse. We need scientists who are particularly sensitive to the factors that lead to disproportionate cancer incidence and mortality in underserved populations and who are prepared to conduct research that will help overcome the cultural and socioeconomic barriers responsible for the unequal burden of cancer.
- Attract and integrate technical and informatics experts into cancer research. Specialists in these disciplines are likely to provide a critical driving force for future progress.
Progress Toward Meeting the Challenge
NCI is employing a variety of individual and institutional training and career development awards to meet the needs of new and established investigators and NCI's anticipated research priorities. Special programs have focused increased resources on career tracks for:
- M.D.s in cancer research
- Behavioral and population scientists
- Minority scientists
- Scientists in highly technical fields important to the future of cancer research
Individual Awards
- Individual National Research Service Awards continue to provide a stable cadre of well-trained basic scientists. Many of the individual awards NCI makes through this program are for postdoctoral fellowships, which allow new Ph.D.s an opportunity to begin to make the transition to becoming independent investigators.
- Individual mentored 5-year awards provide special opportunities for M.D.s in basic or clinical research and for individuals pursuing cancer prevention, control, behavioral, and population science. Interest in these awards has increased dramatically over the last 2 years, resulting in a three-fold increase in the number granted - evidence of both the need for and effectiveness of these programs.
- Bridging awards encourage basic scientists and minority scientists to pursue careers in cancer research. These awards require recipients to undertake mentored and independent research, providing them protected time to develop independent research programs. These special bridging awards have increased steadily since their inception 5 years ago and are on target for achieving their strategic objectives.
- Transition awards provide for 3 years of protected time for people completing mentored postdoctoral training or for new investigators to initiate successful research programs. These awards are now in place for NCI's two most critical areas of need: M.D.s in basic and clinical research and population scientists. A new transition award is now available for minority scientists. Because we have not been able to achieve our targeted objectives for these awards during their first few years, we are taking new measures to increase their accessibility and attractiveness.
- Established investigator awards provide seasoned investigators in the clinical sciences and in cancer prevention, control, behavioral, and population sciences protected time to conduct research and mentor new scientists. The number of these awards has increased since their introduction, and their availability appears to be helping to curtail the migration of physicians from research to patient care.
- New diversified sciences career development awards attract technology developers and scientists in disciplines not traditionally associated with cancer research but clearly needed for the future.
Institutional Awards
Institutional awards are 5-year awards for developing and conducting training and career development programs. These awards achieve special goals by establishing specific requirements and assembling mentors whose skills support program objectives.
- National Research Service Awards, NCI's mainstay for training basic scientists, include special provisions for curricula and research environments that expose all trainees to cancer-related opportunities and important new research approaches of the future.
- Institutional Clinical Oncology Career Development Programs prepare the next generation of clinical scientists to design and implement hypothesis-based clinical trials and to collaborate with basic scientists. There are now nearly 20 of these programs in place throughout the nation.
- Institutional Education and Career Development Programs, initiated in 2000, prepare participants for collaborative, multidisciplinary team research settings. This program is proving to be extremely successful in meeting NCI's strategic needs by stimulating the initiation of new, forward-looking training programs in prevention and control, imaging sciences, outcomes research, and molecular pathology.
- The Continuing Umbrella of Research Experiences Program engages minority high school and undergraduate students and provides them with assistance through all stages of training and career development needed to become independent investigators.
- Minority Institution/Cancer Center Partnerships have the potential to link over 300 Minority-Serving Institutions (colleges and universities whose enrollments include a significant proportion of students from minority groups that are underrepresented in science) with NCI Cancer Centers to increase the number of minority students engaged in cancer research; strengthen the research capabilities of minority institutions; and reduce cancer incidence and mortality in minority populations. Several comprehensive partnerships are now operating, and numerous planning activities are being supported to enhance more focused collaborations between NCI Cancer Centers and minority-serving institutions.
Get more information on NCI cancer research training and career development
The Plan - Cancer Research Training and Career Development
Goal
Build a stable, racially and ethnically diverse cadre of basic, clinical, behavioral, and population scientists trained to work together effectively and to use the most advanced technologies in building our knowledge base and in translating discoveries into more effective cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment strategies.
Fiscal Year 2003 Objectives, Milestones, and Funding Increases Needed
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| Objective 1: Continue to provide training, career development opportunities, and protected research time to developing and established cancer scientists. |
- Maintain a stable National Research Service Award (NRSA) program to train pre-doctoral and post-doctoral basic scientists through traditional institutional and individual awards. Increase the stipends of trainees by 10 percent in order to make research careers more attractive.
| $3.0 M |
- Continue to increase the participation of clinically trained individuals in basic research and in patient-oriented research by funding 20 new individual mentored awards, 20 new transition awards, and 10 new established investigator awards.
| $7.0 M |
- Continue to expand the number of well trained population, behavioral, and public health scientists in cancer research by funding 20 new individual mentored awards, 15 transition awards for junior independent scientists, and 10 awards to established investigators.
| $5.0 M |
- Expand the role of the NCI Intramural Program in training extramural investigators by funding five additional trainees in the NCI Scholars Program and by creating two new intramural training and career development programs that partner and network with extramural institutions and focus on underdeveloped areas that can benefit by integrating sparse resources (e.g., radiation oncology, informatics, prevention).
| $3.0 M |
| TOTAL | $18.0 M |
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| Objective 2: Continue to provide and refine special training and career development opportunities that prepare new and established scientists to function in collaborative, team research settings and that integrate new technical disciplines into the cancer research enterprise. |
- Increase the number of basic scientists who focus on human cancer research and who can collaborate effectively with clinical and population scientists in translational research by funding 30 new special bridging career awards.
| $4.0 M |
- Fund five new Institutional Clinical Oncology Career Development Programs to prepare clinically trained individuals to become expert in all aspects of clinical trials design and implementation as well as effective partners of basic scientists in moving discoveries in the laboratory to improved clinical tests and therapies.
| $3.0 M |
- Implement 10 new Institutional Career Development Programs for training scientists to work in highly complex team research settings involving investigators from diverse disciplines.
| $5.0 M |
- Support five new individual Diversified Sciences Career Development Awards to attract new disciplines (e.g., physics, engineering, informatics) into multidisciplinary cancer research settings.
| $1.0 M |
- Expand and initiate career development opportunities in highly specialized interactive, translational, and research consortia and networks (e.g., Specialized Programs of Research Excellence, Imaging Centers, Tobacco and Tobacco-Related Centers) that are accessible to new and established investigators.
| $5.0 M |
| TOTAL | $18.0 M |
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| Objective 3: Expand programs to recruit, train, and sustain underserved racial and ethnic minority individuals in cancer research and provide partnership opportunities for training and career development. |
- Expand the Continuing Umbrella of Research Experiences (CURE) Program by:
- Adding 50 trainee positions on institutional NSRAs;
- Providing new supplemental funding to 10 cancer centers for high school and undergraduate student research experience
- Adding10 new minority training positions in Clinical Oncology Career Development Programs
- Funding 10 new positions for Cancer Education and Career Development Programs in the population sciences
- Funding 50 new Minority Investigator Supplements to NCI research project grants- Funding 20 new mentored career development awards for basic scientists and clinically trained scientists
- Funding 10 new Career Transition Awards for basic, clinical, behavioral, and population minority scientists in their first junior faculty positions.
| $15.0 M |
- Promote collaborations between scientists and educators in MSIs and in NCI-designated Cancer Centers through 15 planning grants for developing MSI/Cancer Center research training programs for minorities and outreach education programs for minority communities.
| $3.0 M |
- Increase minority access to training and career development opportunities by improving NCI Internet information services, establishing linkages between public and private agencies that provide related services, and establishing 20 new positions in NCI Cancer Centers that will "broker" the connections between minority individuals seeking research experiences and Cancer Center scientists.
| $2.0 M |
- Integrate the NCI CURE Program and the NCI Minority Institution/Cancer Center Partnership Program more effectively into the Minority Biomedical Support Grant Program in the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
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| TOTAL | $20.0 M |
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