AACR president: ‘Full spectrum’ of cancer research must remain priority

Issue: July 25, 2016

Nancy E. Davidson, MD, director of University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, took over as president of the American Association for Cancer Research this spring.

Davidson — an active member of AACR since 1988 — specializes in clinical and translational breast cancer research, cancer biology and treatment, and the role of apoptosis and mechanisms of epigenetic regulation of gene expression of the ER-alpha gene in breast cancer treatment.

Nancy E. Davidson

HemOnc Today spoke with Davidson about what she hopes to accomplish during her presidency, the contributions AACR can have on cancer research, and the evolution of politics and cancer care.

Question: What was your reaction upon being selected as AACR president?

Answer: I was honored, humbled and stunned. I have been an AACR member for a long time and it is a real thrill to have the opportunity to come up through the volunteer ranks and be able to serve as a leader.

Q: What excites you most about this opportunity?

A: I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with our army of volunteers in the war against cancer at this most exciting time scientifically and, frankly, politically. We have so much going on in cancer science that is now translating into cancer medicine and, in the United States, we have the political and the public momentum to try to really deliver on the promise of genome-driven precision cancer care.

Q: Speaking of the political landscape, given the national cancer moonshot initiative led by Vice President Joe Biden, what is the AACR’s role in the effort to ensure adequate funding?

A: All members of the AACR are very much with the vice president about the need to ensure adequate funding for cancer research and all biomedical research going forward. We are delighted with the increase in the NIH budget, and we really hope that will continue. Sustained funding is going to be the answer as we try to make that big dent in cancer.

Q: You served as AACR president-elect for 2015-2016. How did you prepare for your term as president ?

A: I hope I have been preparing throughout my entire career, but fortunately I have had the opportunity to work in a seamless fashion with AACR volunteers, with our AACR staff and with our CEO, Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc). I also am following in the footsteps of a great president — José Baselga, MD, PhD. To me, this preparation has been continuous as part of my career and this was a natural step forward.

Q: What priorities do you hope to address during your term as president?

A: There have been a number of priorities that I put out to our electorate that I think they endorsed. First, we really do believe that good cancer science leads to good cancer medicine, so making sure we focus on scientific evidence and how it is ultimately going to lead to superior patient care is critical. We are very focused on the resources required to make that happen — that is not only financial resources, but also people resources. The right kind of workforce is absolutely critical. We need to make sure we are bringing in a cadre of new investigators that we will need to go forward. We need to ensure they are properly trained in the transdisciplinary science that we must do, and we need to make sure they are representative of our entire population around the country and around the globe.

We are also very primed, of course, to think about how we can work with our partner organizations, patients, regulators, the government, and the people who are involved in helping us operationalize cancer care and cancer science. I also am very keen that we will continue to maximize or optimize our attention on the full spectrum of cancer research, going all the way from prevention, behavioral changes, early detection and epidemiology through to cancer treatment and ultimately to survivorship.

Q: How do you plan to support younger investigators and get them involved?

A : We have already started that. The NCI convened a Blue Ribbon Panel to try to inform the moonshot initiative. We in the AACR felt one thing we could really bring to that panel — populated by many of our senior investigators — is the voice of the young investigator. In the past month, we have had focus groups of young investigators to understand their specific concerns, what brought them into cancer science and cancer research, what it will take to help them stay there, and their thoughts about our scientific priorities. We brought some of them to Capitol Hill to talk to legislators about the importance of our young investigators, the critical nature of what they do, and the need to get them in the field and support them going forward. We plan to continue doing that. Carlos L. Arteaga, MD, who served as AACR president for 2014-2015, was very focused on young people. He established the NextGen Grants for Transformative Cancer Research. We also have a number of programs designed to make sure our young minority and women investigators are at the table. This is important for us because, as a professional society, we want to make sure we are serving our members so they can do good work.

Q: What do you consider the greatest challenge in cancer care, and how can AACR help meet that challenge?

A: The greatest challenge in cancer care right now is to try to translate all the promise of precision medicine — including the preclinical science, basic science and translational science that supports it — into actual evidence-based clinical care, and then making sure that care is available to everybody.

Q: So much progress has been made in cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment in the past decade. What are your expectations for the field for the next 5 and 10 years?

A: I hope in the next 5 years that all of the excitement and the potential we have seen around precision medicine and immuno-oncology will come to the fore and that we will better understand how to use it, where to use it, who to use it with, who not to use it with and how to maximize combinatorial approaches. Initially that will be focused in large part on treatment of cancer, but I hope a lot of the scientific discoveries we make ultimately are going to be beneficial in prevention and risk assessment, which would help increase the number of people who never have cancer. Cancer mortality continues to drop 1% per year in this country. I hope we are going to do at least that well, if not better. I hope we are going to see this convergence of so many different types of science, the amalgamation of all the knowledge that we are gathering that is going to come together in a way that we will have fewer people die of cancer.

Q: Is there a specific area of practice or policy in which you would like to see AACR become more involved?

A: We are involved in virtually all areas of practice and policy, as we should be. We are a large multidisciplinary organization, so all of these things fall under our scope. I am particularly interested in efforts that have to do with funding, getting great science into care, and initiatives that promote access and equity so those things that are known are enjoyed by everybody for whom they are appropriate. We also want to make sure our government agencies are able to work effectively with all the stakeholders to advance cancer care as rapidly and as safely as possible. These are the areas we will focus on.

Q: How can AACR’s membership help you and the society’s other officers succeed and maximize the association’s potential?

A: Our members do it every single day. They show up for work with a passion for what they do. They can see what they are doing and how it adds to solving the puzzle of cancer. AACR must help them do that together. Each individual has a part, of course, but there is strength in numbers and there is opportunity in our coming together. I hope members are going to be really galvanized over this next year and beyond, not only to do the best possible science, but to be able to interact as much as possible to promote those transdisciplinary areas.

Q: I s there anything else you feel is important for our readers to know?

A: Our organization is coming up on its 110th year, but we don’t want to be an organization that operates in perpetuity. We hope that, every day, we are going to get closer to the time when we can declare victory and go out of business. — by Kristie L. Kahl

For more information:

Nancy E. Davidson, MD, can be reached at davidsonne@upmc.edu.

Disclosure: Davidson reports no relevant financial disclosures.