The Nation's Investment in Cancer Research

SEARCH:

Building the Right Kind of NCI for the Future

NCI’s Commitment to All

Because cancer is, in reality, not a singular disease but many conditions, its causes, its progression, and its effects vary tremendously. Despite its heterogeneity, there is perhaps one common trait of all cancers that particularly stands out: fear. Virtually all of us fear cancer. We fear that, as we age, cancer may come to us. If we have survived cancer, we fear it may return. We fear that cancer may take our lives or the lives of those we care about.

The National Cancer Institute is, of course, dedicated to research. And dedicated research can help replace fear with hope. In the years to come, NCI will remain focused on its work and its missions that will, by their very nature, require great change.

• We will need to change how we think about cancer prevention. Choosing the right healthy behaviors — diet and exercise, for example — and avoiding exposure to certain environmental risk factors, none more important than tobacco, can help prevent the development of cancer. Yet, why one person will develop cancer and another will not, given the same exposures, remains largely unknown. We need to apply our rapidly increasing knowledge of both the tumor and its microenvironment, as they relate to specific organ sites, in order to find new targets and markers of early carcinogenic events and, additionally, to study transcriptional regulation and epigenetic changes. We must then find ways to take highly characterized individuals whom we have determined are at high risk and intervene, with manipulations or prevention measures, to mitigate their risk. We need to include earliest diagnosis as a preventive strategy and more deeply incorporate biomarkers and imaging technology into our prevention portfolio.

• We will need to change how we contemplate cancer survivorship. Cancer is rarely a transitory event: something that is dispatched with and then disappears. For a significant proportion of cancer patients, second, third, and even fourth malignancies are a lingering worry. NCI is committed to research that studies the genetics of survivorship in order to better reveal those individuals most at risk for new cancers — and then to design prevention and early detection protocols for each patient.

• We must change how we fight the disparities in cancer care that lead to unequal outcomes. Cancer does not discriminate, but its outcomes are all too frequently affected by race, ethnicity, income, age, and frailty. We must not allow those differences to alter the care we offer. As we bring cancer care closer to patients in their communities, through efforts like the NCI Community Cancer Centers Program, and work to reduce barriers to care through programs like the Community Networks Program, the Minority Institution/ Cancer Center Partnership Program, and the Patient Navigation Research Program, we must ensure that all patients who need care have equal access to the latest treatments and techniques — the fruits of our latest science. We must also work to understand the genetic differences that may lead to different disease burdens, such as the disproportionate rates of prostate cancer among African American men.

• We must remember that research into the causes of cancer equals progress against many diseases. Cancer research studies biological processes at their most basic, molecular level. The knowledge we gain about cancer, about its growth, nourishment, and spread, have been shown time and again to have significance against many diseases. For example, recent studies show that the leukemia drug Gleevec may help in an array of illnesses that have nothing to do with cancer. Among them: diabetes, Crohn’s disease, pulmonary arterial hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis and scleroderma and maybe even seasonal allergies. Our models for cancer care also can lead the way for improved, less costly medical care — from the adoption of electronic medical records, to electronically interconnected hospitals and patients, and to greater use of evidence-based care.

 

Back to Top | Previous Page | Next Page