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NCI Meetings on Real-Time Health Research Using e-Technology
The Health Promotion Research Branch of NCI has sponsored two meetings with nationally recognized researchers to discuss the topic of real-time health research using e-technology. The first conference, entitled
"The Science of Real-Time Data Capture: Self-Reports in Health Research,"
was held Sept. 5-7, 2003, and brought together researchers from a variety of disciplines to discuss the theory, methodology, and application of real-time research in self-reported health. A summary, meeting presentations,
and speaker biographies are highlighted at http://dccps.cancer.gov/hprb/real-time/index.html. A follow-up working group meeting, entitled "Capturing Physical Activity and Diet in Real-Time," was held
Jan. 22 to focus specifically on real-time research with these two key health behaviors, which are central
to cancer prevention and control.
Information garnered from these meetings has been used in the development of the NIH Roadmap initiatives "Meetings and Networks for Methodological Development in Interdisciplinary Research" and "Dynamic Assessment of Patient-Reported
Chronic Disease Outcomes." In addition, ideas and recommendations from the meetings are informing
the development of the NCI energy balance initiatives. For further information about these meeting and activities, visit the above Web sites or contact Dr. Audie Atienza at (301) 402-8246 or atienzaa@mail.nih.gov.
NCI Sponsors Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Centers Meeting
The Epidemiology and Genetics Research Program of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) hosted the second research planning meeting of the Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Centers (BCERC) on Feb. 25-26 in Washington, D.C. The four centers recently were funded jointly by the National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences and NCI.
The centers and principal investigators are the Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, Dr. Jose Russo; Michigan State University, East Lansing,
Dr. Sandra Z. Haslam; the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Sue C. Heffelfinger; and the University of California, San Francisco ("Bay Area Center"), Dr. Robert A. Hiatt.
Functioning as a consortium of basic scientists, epidemiologists, research translational units, and community advocates within and across centers, BCERC will investigate mammary gland development in animals and young girls to determine vulnerability to environmental agents that may
influence breast cancer development in adulthood. NCI program support, to parallel the multidisciplinary breadth of BCERC, is being provided by DCCPS and the Division of Cancer Biology.
Feigal Leaving NCI
Dr. Ellen Feigal, acting director of the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD), leaves NCI in April to join the Translational
Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, Ariz., as Vice President of Clinical Sciences and Deputy Scientific Director.
A medical oncologist with a background in AIDS research, Dr. Feigal joined the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program 12 years ago. She oversaw clinical trials on lung cancer and head and neck cancers and created the NCI AIDS malignancy clinical trials program.
She has continued to head the program, which directs the national AIDS and Cancer Specimen Resource and sponsors the premier annual, international meeting in this field.
Dr. Feigal became DCTD deputy director in 1997 and acting director in 2001. Under her leadership, the division has focused on revamping clinical trials and fostering public-private
partnerships; enhancing and expanding the cancer imaging program; and using genomic, gene expression, and other data to develop molecularly targeted drugs.
PDQ® Clinical Trials Database Grows
NCI and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) are collaborating to expand the number of cancer clinical trials available in NCI's PDQ database.
The source of the new trials is NLM's ClinicalTrials.gov database; as of March 2, almost 200 new trials have been added. ClinicalTrials.gov was created in response to the FDA Modernization Act of 1997, which requires that information about phase II and III trials evaluating treatments for serious or life-threatening illnesses that are conducted under an FDA Investigational New Drug application must be included in a single repository.
PDQ has been the source of most of the cancer clinical trials in ClinicalTrials.gov since that database's inception. However, ClinicalTrials.gov obtains trial information from other sources, including the pharmaceutical
and biotech industries. This exchange of information between NCI and NLM will provide a closely matched set of cancer clinical trials on the cancer.gov and ClinicalTrials.gov Web sites.
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