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Director's Message
Early in 2003, as the Director of the National Cancer Institute, I announced our Challenge Goal to the Nation – to eliminate the suffering and death due to cancer by 2015. Since that time, we at NCI have worked internally and with the national scientific, medical, and lay community to identify the critical elements required to reach this goal. Our proposed strategic investments for Fiscal Year 2006 reflect our recognition that the only way we will achieve our Challenge Goal is to capitalize on the most promising opportunities, remove any barriers that might be impeding progress, and ensure that laboratory discoveries are validated in clinical trials and reach the patient or the person at risk for cancer. Exponential advances in cancer research are defining, with ever increasing specificity, the many genetic, molecular, and cellular events that influence the cancer process. We now understand cancer as an ongoing process that can be interrupted at many stages from susceptibility to initiation to disease progression. We are translating this new knowledge into innovative, evidence-based strategies to prevent cancer from developing, eliminate it early when it does occur, and modulate its devastating effects. With the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG), we are using the power of information technology to connect all cancer researchers to data and analytical tools that will dramatically improve research efficiency. We are advancing imaging technologies to detect tumors early when they are easier to treat, to guide therapy or surgery, and to monitor in real time the molecular effects of therapeutic interventions. Image-guided interventions are used, not only to aid in the successful treatment of some cancers and precancerous lesions, but also to provide minimally invasive, well tolerated therapies that eliminate or transform cancers into well managed diseases. Recent advances in proteomics and the technology of mass spectrometry allow for unprecedented analysis of the body's proteins to define the biomarkers of cancer. Identifying the proteins associated with cancers will allow us to employ recent advances in molecularly targeted imaging to locate very small tumors and interrogate their molecular features. Drugs attached to agents that seek out the proteins on cancer cells will direct therapy exactly where it is needed, without damage to surrounding healthy cells. We are also developing prevention drugs and vaccines. More easily administered strategies like these hold promise for tremendous benefit to people at high risk for certain types of cancer. For example, the cervical cancer vaccines now under development may ultimately save hundreds of thousands of lives around the world every year. Advances gained through cancer initiatives will translate into progress for other serious diseases as well. The new National Advanced Technologies Initiative for Cancer, for example, will build national scale public-private coordination that will have far reaching benefits for cancer as well as many other diseases. Our 2015 Challenge Goal is an urgent call to action that will require a concerted, collaborative effort by the entire community. At NCI, we believe that the Goal is within our grasp, and we are prepared to stretch the boundaries of science, imagination, and human will to achieve success.
Andrew C. von Eschenbach |
