Features

Scientists, medical experts, and advocates work together to help shape NCI's policies and programs through a number of standing and ad hoc advisory groups. Advisory groups provide seasoned assessment of progress and problems in the Nation's effort to reduce the burden of cancer.

• The National Cancer Advisory Board provides overall guidance for NCI and a final assessment of the research proposals selected for funding through peer review.
• The Board of Scientific Counselors evaluates the progress, performance, and productivity of the Institute's intramural research programs and scientists through regular site visits to NCI.
• The Board of Scientific Advisors plays a similar role for NCI's extramural program, reviewing the progress of ongoing programs and providing feedback on proposed new research activities.
• NCI is strongly influenced by the President's Cancer Panel, which monitors the development and execution of the activities of the National Cancer Program and reports directly to the President.
• The Director's Consumer Liaison Group is an all-consumer advisory committee that provides advice not only to the Director but to a number of specific program areas such as cancer communications, survivorship, and science planning.
• Progress Review Groups of scientific and medical experts and advocates examine the research needs and opportunities for specific types of cancer.

Cancer advocates may be cancer survivors, family members or life partners, or people involved in cancer-related activities, such as support group leaders or hotline workers. They come from diverse age groups, races, ethnicities, educational levels, and geographic locations. Cancer advocates are intimately familiar with the hopes, struggles, joys, losses, and successes of cancer patients, those at risk for cancer, and their loved ones. Their advocacy helps present the human face of cancer to scientists, administrators, and the general public, reminding us of the "why" in cancer research.

NCI draws upon the expertise of cancer advocates through two major vehicles. The Director's Consumer Liaison Group (DCLG) is made up of 15 cancer advocates, each representing a unique constituency in the advocacy community. DCLG members advise the Director of NCI on a wide variety of issues, programs, and research priorities. NCI also solicits the advice of patients and their family members through the recently created Consumer Advocates in Research and Related Activities (CARRA) program. Through this program, approximately 200 individuals serve as resources to participate in a wide range of NCI activities. For example, they sit on advisory boards of basic and clinical researchers to help assess research needs for specific cancers, provide advice on the design of clinical trials, and review educational materials.

With the stewardship of our resources in recent years, NCI is fostering numerous efforts with results important not just for cancer but for a number of diseases.

• The early detection work in proteomics conducted through a partnership with FDA is potentially applicable to most acute and chronic diseases.
• The Cancer Genome Anatomy Project contributed extensively to accelerating the national effort to map the human genome.
• New high-resolution molecular imaging methods promise to lead to new approaches to the early detection, screening, diagnosis, and image-guided treatment of cancer and other diseases.
• Infrastructures for therapeutics development such as the Rapid Access to Intervention Development program are being applied to foster new treatments for type 1 diabetes.
• Apoptosis (programmed cell death) has been heavily researched for cancer but also has implications for neurobiology, immunology, aging, and human development and strong association with autoimmunity and degenerative diseases and conditions.
• Angiogenesis research is informing the treatment of cancer and the complications of diabetes. In addition, cancer research has shown that the extra cellular matrix is associated with cell death, influences angiogenesis, impacts blood vessels and nerves in aging tissues of the musculoskeletal system and skin, and may be important to our understanding of the vascular and neurological changes that accompany aging.
• The results of studies on tobacco addiction and cessation have implications for the control of heart and lung disease, stroke, and other serious illnesses.
• As discoveries about the bioactive components arise from NCI nutrition studies, it will be possible to develop more personalized approaches to disease prevention. Multi-agency collaborative research on diet, physical activity, and weight control is identifying societal and environmental approaches that will make it easier for people to make healthy dietary and physical activity choices. Such choices will improve prognosis for overall health and reduce the occurrence of many chronic diseases.
• The cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid promises to serve our vital need to develop medical and health information systems that will serve people all across our Nation.

The NCI-designated Cancer Centers are vital parts of a national strategy to reduce the suffering and death due to cancer. They are encouraged to stimulate collaborative research involving more than one field of study. Of the 60 Cancer Centers now supported by NCI, 39 are Comprehensive Cancer Centers. These Centers conduct research and provide services directly to cancer patients. These facilities must demonstrate expertise in each of three areas: laboratory, clinical, and behavioral and population-based research. In addition, eight institutions around the country currently hold Center planning grants and hope to receive NCI Cancer Center designation in the near future.