The experts are recommending the creation of a new national network that would allow cancer patients across the country to have their tumors genetically profiled and included in a new national database-one of several recommended steps that they say would significantly speed the progress of cancer research in the United States.
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Immunotherapy is a way of programming the body’s immune system to fight the disease.
These recommendations reflect a combined effort of government leaders, private industry representatives, researchers, oncologists, physician-scientists, patient advocates, and philanthropic officials to identify programs and initiatives “that are poised for acceleration and that could unleash new cancer breakthroughs if implemented”, according to the Cancer Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel Report 2016. It is expected to be formally accepted by the National Cancer Advisory Board later Wednesday morning. Scientists could analyze existing tumor tissue at biobanks around the country to look for genetic factors that distinguish which patients would respond to various types of treatments.
Create a human tumor atlas that documents genetic lesions and cellular interactions that map tumor development to help prevent cancer, identify new therapies, and avoid resistance development to existing treatments.
One of the most significant initiatives calls for the creation of a network to offer comprehensive profiling of patients’ cancerous tumors. There is at least one caveat, however: As the panel itself notes, there is now limited evidence about whether tumor profiling actually leads to better care, though that is attributed at least in part to the limited ability of researchers to collect the large amounts of data needed to prove its effectiveness.
Dr. Weiner stressed that steady, predictable funding for the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute is vital as cancer centers work to share data and improve information systems and communication across the cancer continuum.
The panel recommended creating a clinical trial network dedicated to researching how immunotherapies can be applied more successfully across patients and cancer types.
“The vice president has galvanized the community to move forward so we can greatly improve our ability to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer”, said Douglas Lowy, MD, acting director of the NCI. Immunotherapy is showing stunning success in treating even some hard-to-treat cancers, but it only works in a minority of patients. The experts argue the proposed network would help solve some of the riddles now hindering their progress.
“Current immunotherapy treatments represent only the tip of the iceberg of what is possible”, it adds.
The AACR is totally committed to supporting Vice President Biden and his team in all facets of the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative, and is especially pleased that 20 of its members, including two Past Presidents, three Fellows of the AACR Academy, and three members of the Board of Directors were part of the 28-member Blue Ribbon Panel whose charge it was to inform the scientific direction and goals under the vice president’s national cancer initiative. The proposals would require new funding, and the White House has requested more than $1 billion to pay for the moonshot. The report provided health policy groups with evidence that can further their lobbying efforts to Congress to fund the Cancer Moonshot initiative. He said in his speech, with Obama at his side, that he would have liked to have been the president who cured cancer and called for a “moonshot” to end the disease as it now exists.
It is a personal effort for Biden, whose son, Joseph “Beau” Biden III, died from brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46. It was forwarded to Biden’s moonshot task force, which is made up of the heads of various federal agencies and departments. The program aims to accomplish “a decade’s worth of cancer research progress in five years”.
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“As a primary source for the generation, collection and use of molecular, clinical and outcomes data, AACI and its member cancer centers fully support the Blue Ribbon Panel’s call to revolutionize the generation and sharing of medical and research data”, said AACI President George J. Weiner, MD.
