On April 30, 2019 I attended the annual National Cancer Institute (NCI) center directors meeting at the NCI. This meeting provides valuable updates and information on the status of the NCI and the field of cancer research. I'd like to share this information with you and welcome your thoughts and feedback. 

The day was filled with a number of status update presentations by the NCI, with the addition of tobacco issues and presentations about the national effort in smoking exposure reduction for cancer patients (here led by Monica Webb Hooper), and by FDA on regulatory issues including e-cigs.  The day's presentations can be found here.

 

Following are some key take-aways:

Leadership

Paylines

The low funding payline is recognized by NCI and has caused disruptions in awards for R01 and P01. While there has been a 50% increase in applications, many due to an increase in immune-oncology research, it has been recognized that this payline is too low. It is also adversely affected by money diverted to specific efforts of the Moonshot RFAs such as pediatric cancers. While this has led to an increase in total awards, the payline is still low. Overall PRGs represent 41% of the NCI budget and does not include the commitment to SPOREs and cancer centers.

 

Tissue

Our center participates in tissue submission for and access to human tumor xenografts (PDX). The NCI program is now expanded to >1000 samples with paired organoids and nml fibroblasts from the primary tumors.

 

Risk Factors

Second to smoking reduction, the NCI has recognized obesity as the next major cancer lifestyle risk and would like additional efforts in risk reduction management.

 

Clinical Trials

The National Clinical Trial Network (NCTN) program progress has expanded with NCI Community Oncology Research Program  ( NCORP ) clinical trial sites contributing 28% of total accruals, reminding us that network and community sites are important nationally, even if less prominent in our area.

 

The complexity of genomic driven treatment, as evidenced by the results of MATCH studies, now indicate that 6793 patients have had genomic analysis and 944 entered into clinical therapeutic trials, or about 15%.

 

Finally, Jim Doroshow provided an overview of how the NCI will coordinate distinct subset patient clinical trials across the NCTN groups that will yield new therapeutics we will have access to.