From The Cancer Letter: NCI plans to mark the 50th anniversary of the National Cancer Act of 1971 with an effort to build a coalition of support for cancer research, including raising the payline to 15% by 2025.

“With your help, this commemoration can become a movement to coalesce support around our common goals,” NCI Director Ned Sharpless, MD said Oct. 13 during the virtual annual meeting of the Association of American Cancer Institutes and Cancer Center Administrators Forum. “We’d like you to use this framework to talk about your own episodes of progress—how your own cancer centers have contributed to cancer research throughout the decades.”

NCI’s tagline for the campaign—“Nothing will stop us”—will be made available to cancer centers, professional societies, and others. The Cancer Letter will take part in this initiative.

“When I say ‘us,’ I really mean all of us,” Sharpless said. “I really think this is an opportunity for all of us across the research community to clearly say to people with cancer, and the many more whose lives have been touched by cancer, that nothing will stop us in this regard.”

The 50th anniversary of the National Cancer Act is an important opportunity to sustain public support for cancer research progress, Sharpless said.

From The Daily: Interim President Scott Cowen and Provost Ben Vinson III announced Tuesday that Interim Dean Stan Gerson, MD has agreed to extend his term for another year, to June 30, 2022.

“We knew Stan’s deep familiarity with the medical school and its hospital partners would give him distinct advantages as he started in this role,” Interim President Scott Cowen said. “But his ability to apply them in such an engaging and inclusive way has far exceeded even our heightened expectations. We are delighted he will helm the school throughout the 2021-2022 academic year.”

A Distinguished University Professor and longtime Director of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, Gerson accepted the interim role after now-President Emerita Barbara R. Snyder announced she would step down to lead the Association of American Universities starting Oct. 1.

Earlier this week, the second annual Artificial Intelligence in Oncology Symposium (AIO 2020) was held by the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center (Case CCC) and the Center for Computational Imaging and Personalized Diagnostics (CCIPD) at Case Western Reserve University.

While there are a number of meetings and workshops discussing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medicine and AI in cancer, we began planning this event last year with specific intentions of introducing advances in AI in medicine from technical experts with input from key opinion leaders in ethics, policy, regulatory issues, reimbursement and deployment around AI. This year’s four sessions were organized across two days and focused on the role of AI in digital pathology, radiology, drug discovery, and ethics and policy. We were treated to fascinating talks and engaging and exciting panel discussions throughout the symposium. In the digital pathology session, our speakers covered a range of topics spanning the role of AI to predict genomic mutations from pathology images, the role of AI in pharma, challenges and the need for deploying AI in the clinical pathology environment. Geraldine McGinty, MD, MBA, FACR provided an outstanding plenary talk on the role of and the opportunities for AI in radiology. Her key message: radiologists, do not be scared that Artificial Intelligence is going to take away your job, instead, embrace it. The subsequent session on AI in radiology covered challenges and concerns around AI interpretability, the need for large and well-annotated and publicly available imaging datasets, the need to test for AI generalizability and the potential for bias in the training of AI algorithms.

Day two began with three compelling talks on the role of AI in drug discovery. We heard from experts on the opportunities and latest advances in the use of AI for drug discovery, drug repurposing and drug response. The panel discussion covered a range of topics including the role of considering a plurality of populations, the utility of pre-clinical and publicly available datasets in the training of AI approaches, and also the role of pharma in driving innovations in this space. The session was followed by six outstanding talks by students and medical trainees showcasing the use of Artificial Intelligence for lung, brain tumors, the role of AI for predicting outcome and response to chemotherapy and immunotherapy and also the need to carefully consider the role of ethics around AI. The final session focused on ethical and policy considerations in the use of Artificial Intelligence, with three engaging talks covering hype around AI in cancer screening and for precision oncology and targeted therapies, AI for vaccine discovery and the need to consider diverse and underrepresented populations and geographies for building the AI, and finally a discussion around the framework to evaluate the benefits and risks of AI, and paths for payer integration around embracing these emerging technologies.

The main symposium was followed by two parallel “Ask the Expert” virtual meet-ups, one on AI in digital pathology and the other focused on AI in radiology. The break-outs provided an opportunity for trainees, students and junior investigators to ask questions on career paths and employment opportunities in AI and medicine.

While we covered a variety of issues, it is clear that there is still a lot of work to be done in thinking about how Artificial Intelligence can be used for addressing health disparities and social inequality, as well as moving AI from academic labs and into the clinic. In other words, I think this meeting has inspired the next set of questions and sessions for AIO 2021.

It turns out that planning a virtual meeting is just as, and in some ways, more challenging compared to an in-person symposium and none of this could have taken place without the enormous work, energy and dedication of many people both on-screen and behind-the-scenes. From our planning committee and speakers to our staff at CCIPD and the Case CCC, and an incredible campus AV team, many folks made sure this event ran smoothly. Our meeting exceeded expectations, with over 330 registrants, thank you to our participants spanning 5 continents, 16 countries and 26 US states, for making this event a success. Again, we’d like to thank our sponsors and exhibitors: Aiforia, Bristol Myers Squibb, Larvol, Pfizer, Jay and Harita Patel, Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech, and Tempus for their generous support.

Thank you again to all who joined us for this symposium. As a reminder, the recorded talks will be available via Whova for six months and we greatly appreciate any feedback you have for us via this year’s survey. We are already looking forward to seeing you in-person at AIO 2021 next year!

Chair, AIO 2020 Planning Committee

Donnell Institute Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Director, Center for Computational Imaging & Personalized Diagnostics

Case Western Reserve University

The Case GI SPORE was first funded in 2011 and renewed in 2017 with an $11.3 million research grant a Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in GI Cancers.

The Case GI SPORE is once again preparing to submit a competitive renewal application in Sept. 2021. As part of that renewal process we invite R01-level project pre-proposals for the opportunity to be incorporated into the application as full projects. Previously submitted SPORE pilot applications are welcome and encouraged to submit as full projects, especially if they are updated with new progress.

Final selection of projects to be included in the renewal application will be decided by myself and GI SPORE co-PI, Nate Berger, MD. Successful applicants will commit to submitting a full 12-page proposal for further review by the GI SPORE External Advisory Board.

All projects should include a Basic Science and Clinical Leader. All proposals must be directed towards translational research of a GI malignancy, with at least one specific aim that involves direct study of patients or of consented human tissues.

Per SPORE NCI guidelines, each project much incorporate at least one of the following human endpoints:

Experiments using cell lines, xenografts, patient-derived xenografts (PDX), organoids, paired germline samples, or engineered tissues may be important to the translational studies proposed and are encouraged, but are not sufficient to meet the human endpoint requirement.

Pre-proposals should be in PHS 398 format with one page of specific aims and 6 pages of research strategy. Please submit your pre-proposals by November 15, 2020. If you have any questions about the GI SPORE, please contact SPORE administrator, Ms. Peggy Irwin at email: mji2@case.edu.

I look forward to receiving your proposals and am excited at the prospect of collaborating with you.

Principal Investigator, Case GI SPORE

Co-Leader, GI Cancer Genetics Program, Case Comprehensive Cancer Center

Launched in 2019, the Cancer-focused Summer Undergraduate Research Program, CanSUR, supports 32 undergraduates for a 10-week period (June through August) each summer. Undergraduates will be accepted from colleges and universities from across the country to work with one of 82 Case Comprehensive Cancer Center (Case CCC) researchers.

This year, 32 exceptional undergraduates from over 200 applications and 77 schools were selected for the program, but in the interest of public safety in the face of the pandemic, the summer 2020 program was canceled.

The Case Comprehensive Cancer Center's Office of Cancer Training, Education and Research is hopeful that the 10-week summer program for 2021 will take place and will begin accepting applications on November 16.

Questions about CanSUR? Please contact Education Program Manager Gena Richmann at gnb15@case.edu.

Cleveland Clinic has been named a participating institution for the newly established Center for Integrated Multi-Modal and Multi-Scale Nucleome Research, made possible by a recently awarded five-year, $6.5 million consortium grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund. Ming Hu, PhD, assistant staff in the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, and member of the Case CCC's Molecular Oncology Program, is a co-investigator on the grant and will lead the center's multi-omics data analysis efforts. This large grant is one of the latest to be funded as part of NIH's 4D Nucleome Program, which seeks to better understand how genetic material is organized within our cells and how the spatial organization of chromatin contributes to human health and disease.

The Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, with funds from its American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant, will provide seed money to foster cancer research by junior faculty who have no current national grant support of their own. Investigators in the CWRU School of Medicine, University Hospitals of Cleveland, and Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine as well as in other schools and colleges affiliated with Case Western Reserve University are eligible. Grants, not to exceed $40,000, will be awarded to investigators who intend to gather preliminary data to be used in seeking future and independently funded programs.

Postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, research associates, and instructors within another PI’s laboratory are not eligible to apply for these research grants. The subject of the proposed research must be directly related to cancer. The principal investigator must be a full-time member of the faculty within 6 years of their first full-time independent faculty appointment (or equivalent).

The Case Comprehensive Cancer Center requests applications for Cancer Data Sciences pilot projects. Cancer Data Sciences will serve as a discipline in the Case CCC to standardize and organize data for optimal use and leverage advanced analytic approaches to enable independent and synergistic research for basic, clinical, population and translation sciences. Pilot applications should focus on driving new analytical capabilities, developing novel algorithms in order to mine, organize, and standardize cancer data as well as utilizing data sciences approaches to extract knowledge from complex, multi-level cancer data for maximal impact.

The RADxx Awards will honor four outstanding individuals who have helped to lead the way or are emerging fresh voices in imaging informatics. These individuals could be physicians or work in the field in other roles such as administration or IT. They will have actively helped raise awareness for medical imaging informatics, one of the fastest growing disciplines within healthcare.

This RADxx award recognizes a pioneering woman leader in imaging informatics.

This RADxx award is open to both men and women who have helped support and further the advancement of women in imaging informatics.

This RADxx award recognizes the next generation of emerging women leaders in imaging informatics. In addition to the award recognition, this recipient will receive a travel award to attend the SIIM Annual Conference and will be paired with leaders from the RADxx community to provide a priceless, guided mentor experience while at the event!

This RADxx award recognizes individuals who have helped to sponsor the career development of women in medical imaging informatics.