Our Role in Cancer Research
The National Cancer Institute's goal is to stimulate and support scientific discovery and its application to achieve a future when all cancers are uncommon and easily treated.
NCI works toward this goal in two major ways.
- We provide vision to the Nation and leadership for NCI-funded researchers across the United States and around the world.
- We work to ensure that the results of research are used in public health programs and clinical practice to reduce the burden of cancer for all people.
Building on past discoveries and technological advances, we plan, conduct, coordinate, and support cutting-edge research and its application. We encourage creativity and innovation in all of our endeavors; support development of, access to, and use of new technologies by cancer researchers; and back up these approaches by providing research training and career development opportunities and maintaining support mechanisms and collaborative environments to link scientists with their colleagues and with critical technological and information resources.
As leader of the National Cancer Program, we provide the public with scientifically sound cancer information using all forms of communication carefully designed to meet the needs and preferences of cancer patients, their families, and those who care for them.
Our ultimate purpose is to help move research findings into clinical practice, chart and improve the quality of cancer prevention and care, and reduce disparities in the burden of cancer.
How We Plan and Set Priorities
How We Work
How We Spend Our Budget
New Intramural Structure Maximizes Collaboration at NCI
Top of Page
How We Plan and Set Priorities
NCI engages in a number of ongoing planning and priority setting activities to ensure that we are responsive to new discoveries and opportunities and make the best use of our resources. Our leaders work closely with NCI staff, the researchers we support, and representatives from the scientific, medical, and advocacy communities to determine what is needed and how best to move the science forward.
We plan research that will comprehensively address critical unanswered questions covering the many forms of cancer and the various populations that experience them. We work to integrate basic, population, and clinical research through translational activities and strive to identify new opportunities as well as gaps and barriers to progress that help us create new programs and improve existing ones. Program assessment is key to keeping our research portfolio balanced and our support structure strong. To implement recommendations arising from assessments, we convene scientists from diverse settings with NCI staff to redesign programs and develop new initiatives. We track implementation and regularly report on our progress.
Our planning activities encompass three key components required for a strong cancer research enterprise:
- Maintaining a sound research infrastructure and building capacity for the future. We give priority to developing the technological and personnel resources needed to support changing scientific and resource needs and the translation of new knowledge and emerging technologies into clinical practice.
- Capitalizing on extraordinary scientific opportunities. We seek opportunities that promise to provide profound insights into cancer - those opportunities that hold greatest potential to lead to major improvements in our ability to prevent, control, detect, diagnose, and treat cancer.
- Disease-specific research. We continually assess our portfolios and plan for the research needed to uncover the biological and other characteristics that are unique to specific forms of cancer.
Top of Page
How We Work
We sponsor and conduct cancer research.
We foster research through collaborations and partnerships.
We work to ensure that people benefit from our research.
We sponsor and conduct cancer research.
The National Cancer Institute's primary mission is to sponsor and conduct cancer research, and we use our budget to support a broad range of research that will expand our understanding of cancer and develop improvements in prevention and care. Some investigators conduct basic laboratory research on genes that may cause cancer. Others are studying the incidence of cancer in specific populations, such as farm families and former smokers. Still other scientists focus on translational research, such as developing tests to identify patients who carry genes that may make them susceptible to cancer, or clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of new diagnostic tools or drugs for treating cancer.
Extramural Research Program
Intramural Research Program
Research Management and Support
Research Tools and Services
Research Training and Career Development
Extramural Research Program
The largest portion of research funds goes to support the work of scientists conducting research in universities, teaching hospitals, and other organizations outside the NIH. Proposals submitted by these extramural investigators are selected for funding by peer review, a process by which cancer experts from around the country identify the best science and most needed areas of discovery by evaluating the approximately 5,000 new research proposals NCI receives every year. With guidance and oversight from program experts in NCI's Divisions of Cancer Biology, Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis, Cancer Prevention, and Cancer Control and Population Sciences, cancer research is conducted with NCI funding in nearly every state in the U.S. and more than 20 foreign countries.
Intramural Research Program
Another portion of our research dollars stay at the NIH in Maryland, where some 400 NCI principal investigators are at work. These intramural investigators in NCI's Center for Cancer Research and Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics focus on the rapid translation of basic laboratory research to clinical testing and long-term epidemiologic and genetics studies. Recent changes in the structure of the intramural program promise to further enhance their role in the Nation's cancer research effort.
More on the Center for Cancer Research
Research Management and Support
As the number of NCI's research initiatives has grown in recent years, so too have the responsibilities of our scientific managers and administrators. Research management and support budgets are used for the critical technical and administrative services required for NCI to carry out its work. The include central administration functions, overall program direction, grant and contract review and administration, personnel, program coordination, and financial management, we:
- Administer the peer review process
- Carry out priority setting, and program development activities
- Facilitate technology transfer
- Develop and maintain new information technology systems
- Manage day-today business, personnel and facilities functions
- Ensure the stewardship of public funds.
Research Tools and Services
In addition to direct research funding, NCI offers cancer scientists a variety of useful research tools and services. Among the research resources made available to investigators at little or no cost are: - Tissue samples
- Mouse models of cancers
- Statistics on cancer incidence and mortality
- Databases of genetic information
- Mouse Software for analyzing statistical and genetic data.
Research Training and Career Development
NCI devotes approximately four percent of its annual budget to preparing the next generation of cancer researchers and ensuring a steady flow of well trained investigators. Each year, we provide cancer research training and career development opportunities to more than 2,000 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and oncologists. Some of this research training takes place on the NIH campus, but most goes on in universities and teaching hospitals around the U.S.
Learn more about current NCI research at the New Cancer Research Portfolio Web Site, the most comprehensive, easy to use source of information about NCI-supported research.
Top of Page
We foster research through collaborations and partnerships.
Cancer Centers Program
Centers of Research Excellence
Clinical Trials Program
Networks and Consortia
Partnerships with Other Federal and State Agencies
Advisory Groups
Cancer Centers Program
To ensure that we use public funds to greatest advantage, NCI encourages collaborative research and partners with other organizations in numerous ways. We began one of our longest-running partnerships by establishing the Cancer Centers Program in the early 1960s. Congress encouraged the expansion of the Program to improve the quality of cancer care by bringing cancer scientists and oncologists together in the same setting with patients and their families. Today, two-thirds of the 60 centers funded by NCI are Comprehensive Cancer Centers, so designated because of the breadth and depth of the research conducted by their investigators and their role in public education and outreach.
Centers of Research Excellence
NCI's Centers of Research Excellence also bring together groups of cancer scientists from different areas of expertise. Centers of Excellence are smaller in scale than other NCI Cancer Centers and generally focus on one or a few types of cancer or scientific areas. For example, NCI's Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPOREs) focus on translational research for specific cancers.
Other examples of NCI Centers of Research Excellence are the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers, In Vivo Cellular and Molecular Imaging Centers, and the soon-to-be established Centers of Excellence in Cancer Communications Research. All of these centers:
- Support interactive, interdisciplinary research
- Make research resources and flexible exploratory funds available to investigators
- Provide research training and career development opportunities.
Top of Page
Clinical Trials Program
The largest collaborative research activity sponsored by NCI is our clinical trials program for testing cancer treatments, diagnostic tests, and interventions for preventing cancer. With the participation of more than 10,000 medical school and private practice physicians in NCI's Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program and Community Clinical Oncology Program, NCI supports over 1,300 clinical trials a year involving more than 200,000 patients.
Network and Consortia
NCI also brings investigators together through networks like the Early Detection Research Network, which assembles groups of scientists to identify markers and develop tests to detect early signs of cancer, and consortia like the Mouse Models of Human Cancer Consortium, in which scientists from around the world share their expertise and resources in creating strains of mice that develop cancers similar to those seen in humans.
Partnerships with Other Federal and State Agencies
NCI also fosters collaborative work through partnerships with other Federal and state agencies with roles in improving the Nation's health. For example, much of the data on cancer trends available today has been collected and analyzed through the combined efforts of NCI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and state cancer registries. In addition, NCI has joined forces with five other federal agencies to work on a number of projects aimed at improving the quality of cancer care, such as efforts to raise the rates of colon cancer screening among veterans and the elderly.
Advisory Groups
Scientists, medical experts, and advocates also work together to help shape NCI's policies and programs through a number of standing and ad hoc advisory groups.
- 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.
- On a regular basis, NCI convenes Progress Review Groups of scientific and medical experts and advocates to examine the research needs and opportunities for specific types of cancer.
- NCI also is strongly influenced by the President's Cancer Panel's assessment of progress and problems in the Nation's effort to reduce the burden of cancer.
In addition to their membership on other NCI advisory groups, advocates provide the NCI Director broad advice on program and research priorities through the Director's Consumer Liaison Group, an all-consumer advisory committee.
NCI also solicits the advice of patients and their family members through the recently created Consumer Advocates in Research and Related Activities (CARRA) program. This pool of 150 advocates will participate in progress review groups assessing research needs for specific cancers, provide advice on the design of clinical trials, and review education materials we develop.
Top of Page
We work to ensure that people benefit from our research.
The results of NCI-sponsored research consistently provide cancer patients and those who care for them with information, tools, and tests that impact cancer care and help people make better health choices. For example, once its effectiveness was confirmed in clinical trials, oncologists were quick to adopt the use of Tamoxifen in the care of breast cancer patients. Likewise, since studies established the link between diet and cancer risk, more and more of us now strive to include five servings of fruits and vegetables in our daily diets.
Cancer Communications
Commercialization
Health Disparities Research
Cancer Communications
Many of these advances reach the medical community and the public through medical journals and news reports, but we help move the process along through a range of cancer communications activities. NCI provides information on scientific advances to the media and the public using an extensive array of information resources including:
- A toll-free telephone service available in all regions of the country
- Printed brochures and educational packages
- Web-based information on cancer and clinical trials
NCI-sponsored researchers work to create the best methods for reaching all who need to learn about cancer, recent research findings, and opportunities to participate in clinical trials.
Commercialization
When NCI-sponsored research results in discoveries that may lead to new drugs, devices, or diagnostic tests, federal laws encourage universities - and NCI - to pursue commercialization by licensing them to industry. In addition, NCI intramural investigators can also collaborate with industry through arrangements known as Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs). It is through such an agreement between NCI and a major pharmaceutical company that investigators are continuing to follow chronic myelogenous leukemia patients treated with the recently approved anti-cancer agent Gleevec™, to determine its long-term effects.
The Story of Gleevec™ is an example of how a new targeted drug was developed from basic research in the laboratory to full development and use in the clinic through the efforts of a pharmaceutical company.
Health Disparities Research
NCI is working to make a difference in peoples' lives through its efforts to address the differences in who gets cancer, how they get treated, and what the outcomes are. Our programs include research into the causes of health disparities as well as measures to translate research results into better health for groups at high risk for cancer.
- For example, NCI-sponsored investigators are using insurance data to examine the extent to which African American, Hispanic, and White patients are receiving recommended treatments for colon cancer.
- In addition, NCI is supporting field tests of smoking cessation and weight control programs targeted to the needs of specific racial and ethnic groups.
Top of Page
How We Spend Our Budget
Nearly 90 percent of our budget is directly dedicated to cancer research, understanding how and why cancer strikes and developing improvements in its prevention and care. The remainder of our budget is used for research training and career development, the communication of cancer information, and research management and support.
| Extramural Research | 73% |
| Intramural Research | 16% |
| Research Training and Career Development | 4% |
| Communications | 3% |
| Research Management and Support | 4% |
Top of Page
New Intramural Structure Maximizes Collaboration at NCI
The Center for Cancer Research (CCR) was recently established within NCI's Intramural Research Program, to bring together previously separate basic and clinical science activities. The major impetus behind the merger was to allow translational research the best opportunity to flourish by creating a highly interactive, interdisciplinary environment that will maximize the use of researcher expertise and technology to perform cutting edge basic, translational, and clinical investigations and facilitate communication, interaction, and quick response to promising research findings.
The infrastructure and interdisciplinary environment of the CCR make it especially ideal for translational research by providing a defined process for and support to researchers studying promising targeted treatments. "Faculties" bring together scientists who work in different disciplines but on similar cancer research problems across the Institute, both intramural and extramural. The faculties provide a venue for sharing information, informal peer review, and successful collaboration.
To further encourage interaction of scientists, both external and Center researchers can become adjunct appointees within CCR laboratories. These appointments allow researchers to work more closely with other laboratories than would have been possible in traditional collaborations. Adjunct investigators attend meetings and become involved in the day-to-day work of the laboratory.
Interdisciplinary training programs are also under development through the CCR to encourage young investigators to explore promising new areas of science, such as those found at the intersection of chemistry and biology, statistics and biology, or pathology and genetics.
|
