National Cancer Institute
Clearly, we are in a new genomic era of science. Laboratories are generating and discovering new knowledge about cancer at a pace never before seen. Yet, for a cancer patient, we must provide much more than new knowledge. Cancer patients want solutions. They want therapies that are effective and free of debilitating side-effects. They want earlier detection. They want comprehensive answers to a complex problem. Through our knowledge of genes, proteins, and pathways, NCI is demonstrating true and lasting value, when measured in lives extended, lives saved, and lives spared the immense burdens of cancer. The pages that follow discuss NCI’s vision of a unified platform of efforts to utilize its second-to-none resources in developing new, safe, and effective drugs.
To advance NCI’s mission of bringing novel therapies to patients — and to more fully exploit its expertise in the later stages of preclinical development — NCI is focusing efforts and resources on the identification of drug candidates and on ways to enhance the entry of early-stage drug candidates into the therapeutics pipeline.
The path from discovery to a new drug necessarily begins with establishing which opportunities to pursue. The virtual avalanche of genome-wide association studies and the genomic information about tumors that has begun to spring from The Cancer Genome Atlas project will overwhelm our capacity to study new targets. Consequently, it will be necessary to review new findings and come to agreement on which concepts should rapidly move into the process of further refinement. NCI will require great scientific minds to help us make the most important choices.
NCI has state-of-the-art resources that span candidate identification through first-in-human testing. These unique resources and programs may offer technologies and capabilities that few universities or private sector entities have at their disposal. NCI must, in fact, become a better facilitator of their work, helping to reduce barriers and to provide developmental assistance. Additionally, NCI’s intramural scientists will continue to develop and test new therapies for rare cancers, which tend to draw lesser interest from industry.
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