Blue ribbon panel presents research road map for cancer moonshot initiative

The national cancer moonshot initiative’s blue ribbon panel delivered 10 recommendations to form a 5-year research blueprint to accelerate progress against cancer at the NCI’s National Cancer Advisory Board meeting.

These ten recommendations were subsequently accepted by the NCI.

"The vice president has galvanized the community to move forward so we can greatly increase our ability to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer," said Douglas Lowy, MD, acting director of the NCI. "The work of the Blue Ribbon Panel and working group members has been extraordinary, and I thank them for their time, energy, and ideas. I am confident that the cancer community will build on this effort and seize this unprecedented opportunity to accelerate progress."

The blue ribbon panel’s ten recommendations to accelerate progress against cancer are to:

establish a network for direct patient involvement;
create a network of clinical trials devoted exclusively to immunotherapy;
develop ways to overcome patient resistance to therapy;
build a national cancer data ecosystem for sharing and analysis;
strengthen research on the major drivers of childhood cancers;
minimize cancer treatment’s debilitating side effects;
implement evidence-based approaches for prevention and early detection;
mine past patient data to predict future patient outcomes;
generate a 3D cancer atlas; and
develop new cancer technologies.

“This is an enormous, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the cancer community and our nation to come together around a single disease that touches everyone,” blue ribbon panel co-chairs Tyler Jacks, PhD, Elizabeth Jaffee, MD, and Dinah Singer, PhD, wrote in the draft report. “We are at an exciting time in our understanding of cancer and in the way we approach how we prevent, diagnose, treat and survive it.”

The cancer moonshot initiative invited government leaders, private industry representatives, researchers, oncologists, physician-scientists, patient advocates and philanthropic officials to contribute their ideas and expertise for future advances in cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care.

ASCO and the American Association for Cancer Research — both of which contributed ideas to the blue ribbon panel — supported the ten recommendations and applauded the panel for its efforts.

“The panel's thoughtful work makes an important contribution to the cancer moonshot initiative,” ASCO president Daniel F. Hayes, MD, FASCO, said in a press release. “The recommendations could significantly expedite our nation's progress against cancer if implemented.”

Additional funding will be necessary to fund these recommended breakthrough research opportunities, AACR president Nancy E. Davidson, MD, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, said in a press release.

"The recommendations that were announced today by the Cancer Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel are vitally important to accomplishing the goal of the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative, which is to achieve a decade's worth of advances in five years," she said. "Therefore, the AACR calls on Congress and the Administration to begin the work of finding a path forward for securing the funding necessary to support these significant scientific opportunities, which ultimately will make a major difference for cancer patients and their loved ones."

In addition to these 10 research areas, the blue ribbon panel’s report also outlines specific research projects. These include a demonstration project to test for Lynch syndrome, the establishment of a nationwide pediatric immunotherapy clinical trials network, the exploration of patient-derived organoids, and development of “microdosing” devices to test drug responses in living tumors.