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A new model for cancer research
By Andrew C. von Eschenbach
April 8, 2005
You have cancer" are words that always change a person's life and often herald the end of life. The terror of the diagnosis is only relieved by expectation of an effective intervention. "What to do" is often expressed by the oncologist who bases the recommendation on an assessment of the cancer's location, extent and appearance under a microscope.
No more! The future holds the promise of new technologies and new teams of experts who will analyze the genetic and molecular changes within cells that determine their malignant, or cancerous, behaviors. This team can then use that knowledge to tailor treatments to a particular patient's needs.
How can our nation's investment in cancer research be used to hasten this era of personalized oncology? In order to make this hope for the future happen, we must bring together researchers from various disciplines and encourage public-private partnerships. It is the new model for cancer research called "team science" – sharing ideas, forging new relationships and collaboratively using new tools to take a new look at cancer as a disease process and a disordered system. This model includes teams of experts who can view not only the parts and pieces of the cancer machinery, but who can integrate that knowledge and design a "magic strategy" – not a "magic bullet" – of drugs, biologics and even devices used in an integrated fashion. The old model of cancer research taking place in isolated "silos" must fade away.
"Team science" increasingly is being practiced innovatively throughout the National Cancer Institute's cancer center network, including right here in San Diego – at the University of California San Diego's Rebecca and John Moores Cancer Center. Emblematic of the cancer center network, the UCSD center has become one of many centers for accelerating "translational" cancer research and for developing and applying new technologies – such as genomics, proteomics, informatics and others – for cancer.
This week, the cancer center opens a new, 270,000-square-foot facility as its new home in La Jolla . The building will allow UCSD to unite – under one roof – diverse research and clinical and outreach activities. But there is much more to this than the christening of a gleaming structure. This is about our network of cancer centers moving further to the forefront of the dramatic change taking place in cancer research. This is also about NCI's regional cancer centers – there are 60 in all – supporting our national mission at NCI to eliminate suffering and death due to cancer within the next decade.
There are those who may think we are being overly optimistic in believing that emerging technologies can help conquer cancer. However, through collaboration between cancer scientists and others not traditionally involved in cancer research, we can quicken the pace of our progress against cancer. We owe it to 1.5 million people who will be diagnosed with cancer this year to listen to the drumbeat of emerging technology as we search for ways to conquer this disease.
Our cancer centers understand this dynamic, and that is why they must lead the way when it comes to exploring public-private opportunities, such as publicly funded academic centers partnering with the private pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries and device manufacturers. The centers must be incubators for developing partnerships. As Dr. Dennis Carson, the UCSD center's director, puts it: "The idea is to create a place with ferment in it, that is constantly churning new ideas."
All of our centers actively cultivate relationships with industry in search of opportunities to match cancer investigators with private sector researchers. The UCSD center is among 14 institutions awarded a federal grant to encourage academic-industry partnerships that will hasten the development of cancer treatments.
San Diego can boast of having some of the most impressive biotechnology companies in the country, with about half of those companies involved in cancer work. UCSD has parlayed this into formalized cancer research relationships with several biotech companies: Biogen Idec Inc., Bayer Healthcare (Diagnostic Division), Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, Althea Technologies and Structural GenomiX Inc.
NCI sponsored a national roundtable on leveraging technology resources and capabilities to speed cancer progress. In those discussions involving key representatives from the public, private, academic and nonprofit sectors working on cancer, cancer centers were identified as a key resource base and as regional hubs of investment and partnership.
Clearly, our centers, here and around the country, are demonstrating how this hub concept can work and must work if we are to win the fight against cancer.
That is why the dedication of this new facility this week has less to do with the building of new doors, walls, windows, bricks or mortar, and everything to do with the building of partnerships, resources and ideas that will save many lives.
Von Eschenbach is director of the National Cancer Institute, the nation's principal agency for cancer research and training, a position he has held since January 2002.
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