News Feature | September 20, 2016

Cancer Moonshot's Blue Ribbon Panel Releases Recommendations For Research

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

research collaboration

Report lists 10 compelling research opportunities for advancing cancer treatment.

The Blue Ribbon Panel, designated to advise the country on how to move forward with Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot, was given the charge of assessing the current state of cancer diagnosis and treatment and the potential created by the Cancer Moonshot initiative. To that end, the Panel has issued a report which includes 10 recommendations for what it sees as “the most compelling research opportunities” to fund in order to learn how to more effectively treat and prevent the disease.

The report was formally accepted by the National Cancer Advisory Board on September 7, with revisions that reflect the NCAB’s discussion. “The bold but feasible cross-cutting initiatives in this report will improve outcomes for patients with cancer, prevent cancer and increase our understanding of cancer,” said National Cancer Institute (NCI) Acting Director Douglas Lowy, M.D. “NCI stands ready to accelerate cancer research in the critical areas identified by the Blue Ribbon Panel.”

The Cancer Moonshot initiative was announced by President Obama in his January 2016 State of the Union Address, “for the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the families we can still save.” In February, Biden pledged, “I plan to do two things: increase resources — both private and public — to fight cancer, and break down silos and bring all the cancer fighters together- to work together, share information, and end cancer as we know it.”

As the report authors explain, the recommendations “represent a merger of science, technology, advocacy, social science, and Big Data, coming together to solve cancer’s greatest challenges.” Technology plays a significant role in the recommendations in light of its potential to help researchers, clinicians, and patients across organizations collaborate on assembling and synthesizing data in new ways.

The 10 transformative approaches offered by the report include:

  • Engage patients to contribute their comprehensive tumor profile data to expand knowledge about what therapies work, in whom, and in which types of cancer.
  • Establish a cancer immunotherapy clinical trials network devoted exclusively to discovering and evaluating immunotherapy approaches.
  • Identify therapeutic targets to overcome drug resistance through studies that determine the mechanisms that lead cancer cells to become resistant to previously effective treatments.
  • Create a national ecosystem for sharing and analyzing cancer data so that researchers, clinicians and patients will be able to contribute data, which will facilitate efficient data analysis.
  • Improve our understanding of fusion oncoproteins in pediatric cancer and use new preclinical models to develop inhibitors that target them.
  • Accelerate the development of guidelines for routine monitoring and management of patient-reported symptoms to minimize debilitating side effects of cancer and its treatment.
  • Reduce cancer risk and cancer health disparities through approaches in development, testing and broad adoption of proven prevention strategies.
  • Predict response to standard treatments through retrospective analysis of patient specimens.
  • Create dynamic 3-D maps of human tumor evolution to document the genetic lesions and cellular interactions of each tumor as it evolves from a precancerous lesion to advanced cancer.
  • Develop new enabling cancer technologies to characterize tumors and test therapies.

Several of those efforts would involve the creation of networks, including a Network for Direct Patient Engagement, a Cancer Immunotherapy Clinical Trials Network, and a Pediatric Immunotherapy Clinical Trials Network.

“Thanks to the coalescence of new scientific insights and technological innovations, cancer research is poised to make unprecedented advances,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. “The approaches identified by the Blue Ribbon Panel offer exceptional promise in tipping the odds in favor of cancer patients.”