Building Research Teams of the Future

NIH and NCI Find New Ways to Support Interdisciplinary Team Science

Increasingly, scientists must be able to work in interdisciplinary teams to understand and fully explore the interplay among environmental, lifestyle, genetic, and molecular variables contributing to cancer and take advantage of the technological resources available to help them do this.

NIH Roadmap initiatives for building Research Teams of the Future are designed to foster team science by making it easier for scientists to work across disciplines and organizations. NIH will redirect resources to train scientists in interdisciplinary strategies, create specialized centers to help forge innovative and more advanced disciplines from existing ones, and plan forward looking conferences to catalyze collaboration among the life and physical sciences. New funding mechanisms will grant principal investigator status to all key members of a research team, provide research funding to multiple institutions, require integrated reviews of grant applications that take into account the melding of the various disciplines, and encourage interdisciplinary teams to evolve in both directed and serendipitous ways. NCI is aligning funding mechanisms, organizational culture, and strategic investments to accelerate interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research.

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Within the NCI 2006 Strategic Investments, interdisciplinary training will play a critical role.

For example:

• Education and training programs in health disparities will help create a research and cancer care workforce sensitive to the needs of diverse populations and cultures.
• Training opportunities for clinical researchers, oncology research nurses, and basic, clinical, and public health teams will foster the development of a cadre of investigators who can work between bench and bedside.
• Joint training programs with medical and public health schools, new training awards, and new curricula will enhance the ability of teams to collaborate effectively in research relevant to molecular epidemiology.
• Cancer biology training programs will prepare interdisciplinary scientists to build, characterize, and validate computational models and to use organotypic culture systems.

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Research partnerships will focus interdisciplinary efforts on such topics as:

• The interplay of behavior, chemistry, toxicology, and biology to determine the cancer risk potential of reduced-exposure tobacco products.
• The mechanisms of energetics, energy balance, and cancer and how they inform approaches for the prevention of obesity.
• The social and genetic determinants of and community-based interventions for overcoming cancer health disparities.
• Interventions to improve early detection, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and survivorship in persons older than 65.
• Normal and malignant tissue microenvironments, their molecular signatures, and the origin of the cells and factors that comprise the tumor stem cell and the tumor microenvironment.
• The associations of known cancer viruses with cancers not previously linked to these viruses and the role of microbial agents in the etiology of human cancers.
• The causes of and risks for highly lethal cancers such as pancreatic, liver, and esophageal.

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Numerous established and new NCI initiatives and programs support interdisciplinary teams.

These include NCI-supported Cancer Centers, the Specialized Programs for Research Excellence, the Academic Public-Private Partnership Programs, a new Biospecimen Initiative, the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid and consortium, the Cancer Genetics Network, the Cancer Genome Anatomy Project, a new Cancer Genome Analysis Program, new Centers for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities, Centers of Excellence in Cancer Communications Research, a new Clinical Proteomics and Biomarker Discovery Program, the Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program, the Community Clinical Oncology Program, new Community Networks to Reduce Cancer Disparities, various consortia for interdisciplinary epidemiological studies, the Drug Development Group, the Early Detection Research Network, a network of high-throughput genotyping laboratories, In Vivo Cellular and Molecular Imaging Centers, Integrative Cancer Biology Programs, the intramural Molecular Targets Development Program, National Cooperative Drug Discovery Groups, the Network for Translational Research Optical Imaging, the Minority Institution/ Cancer Center Partnership Program, a new integrated preclinical development program, new centers for Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer, Interdisciplinary Research Teams for Molecular Target Assessment, and Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers.

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