Cancer research and treatment priorities for 2024: NCI’s new director talks to cancer community

Dr. Kimryn Rathmell, the new Director of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI), asked on X:

“To the cancer community: I’d love to hear from you! What are your priorities related to cancer research, cancer treatment, or other topics in 2024?”

OncoDaily collected several important suggestions from the cancer community.

• Nathan A. Pennell
  “Implementation research: biomarker driven treatments only work if pts are identified which we do poorly and inequitably nationwide. Focus less on the hot new treatments and more on learning how to get the ones we know work to the people who need them!”
• Abdelali (Ali) Majdi
  “Implement a ´real world version’ of NCI-MATCH to boost early comprehensive genomic testing for all patients and offer a personalized treatment plan for each individual while generating RWD to infol future research.
  ´The raison-d’être of Precision Oncology is to offer ‘the right drug for the right patient at the right time’´Vivek Subbiah Razelle Kurzrock”
• Nicole L. Stout
  ⭐️⭐️Rural survivorship care- delivering supportive care in underresourced rural areas, improving primary care workforce knowledge/skills in long-term survivorship mgmt, capacity building and improving community engagement.
  ⭐️ Improving ePRO use in clinical care delivery to enhance – Using ePROs to drive EHR pathways for early connection to supportive services.
  ⭐️Improved understanding of how SDOH influence functional performance and risk for functional decline
  among survivors.
• Yuvaan Tiwari Foundation
  Prioritize, accelerate and fund innovative childhood cancer research and collaborations, especially for extremely aggressive and fatal brain tumors like DMG and DIPG. No family should hear the words “go home and make memories.” Thanks for seeking input from those impacted.
• Zihai Li
  If a clinical trial is approved by one IRB from one of the accredited institutions in the United States, it does not need to go through a gazillion of other local IRBs to get it approved. Clinical trial infrastructure and regulatory climate are designed to slow us down.
• Janice Cowden
  
• Shilpa Gupta
  Thanks NCI Director for asking the cancer community for their suggestions.
  I think mandating a % minority enrollment on clinical trials would be good. We talk about it but still don’t see enough minority population representation.
• Normarie Torres-Blasco
  Implementing the psychosocial interventions for Latino patients and caregivers coping with advanced cancer.
• Tingting Zhang
  Physician-led research with patient communities to generate guideline-changing quality data that will assess the REAL benefit/risk of marketed drugs in different ethnic groups. Research into preventable cancers prevalent in foreign born people in the US (liver, gastric,etc)
• Smitha Krishnamurthi
  Thanks for asking!!! Increased funding for NCTN studies is sorely needed so sites can open them without losing money. We could answer important questions so much faster.
• Sarah Sammons
  Staff retention. The shortages everywhere are alarming
• Tulsi Jose
  Post Doc Research Fellowship Salary needs to reflect current economic conditions.
• Gloria Staebler
  Broad access to top labs and the latest therapies. Pathways to bypass mediocre care for stubborn cases. Regulate and limit insurance delays, flagging, and interference.
• Avirup Guha
  I love the outreach- please assist science that changes this map of prostate cancer disparities – https://x.com/avirupguha/status/1690457567703580673?s=46&t=EqzueHmNtPIHZji-N4PgZQ
  Rural GA mortality for AA men is worse that the country with the highest PC mortality. White men is at national average.
• Alana Welm
  Tax dollars from pharma profit should go directly back into NIH and NCI. Academic effort trains their scientists and fuels the R&D engine. We can’t continue with <flat budget: more and more expensive to do meaningful research.
• Haydn Kissick
  We waste too much time writing grants that could be spent doing science. Nobody I’ve spoken to thinks the R01 system is optimal. This has all been said before, far better than I ever could.
  https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(15)00642-X
• Gunder lab
  The trainee crisis: a unified and fair evaluation of their value, how we can afford them and still accomplish the NCI’s goals. Ideally, this wouldn’t put institutions against each other but offer flexibility on salary without constantly putting more pressure on PIs to deliver.
• Benyam Muluneh
  Leveraging the knowledge/experience of oncology-trained clinical pharmacists is key in optimizing the delivery of high quality cancer care. The pharmacist could be the “secret sauce” of the cancer care team but often left out of initiatives such as Cancer Moonshot.
• The IBC Network UK
  We continue to raise awareness, educating to support earlier diagnosis and correct trimodal treatment for inflammatory breast cancer improving outcomes for patients and their families.
  We are the ONLY charity funding IBC research in the UK.
  Please include IBC in your trials!
• Conni T
  Require insurance companies to pay for liquid biopsies and biomarker testing. Have them pay for treatments that are best via our own doctors. Cover trial and new treatments for late stage. Make trials open for compassionate use. Change Right to Ask to Right to Try.
• Amatruda Lab
  I’d like to see the NCI continue its strong support of Childhood Cancer research, especially for immunotherapy of pediatric solid tumors. Need to accelerate clinical translation. Thank you for taking on your new role–we are lucky to have you as NCI Director!
• Sudha Sundar
  1) Early diagnosis and prevention research.
  Declaring ‘success’ for targeted therapy when gain OS is 4 months doesn’t restore life expectancy and is expensive
  2) Implementation and benchmarking studies
  We often know what works in theory but not in practice
  3) global oncology
• Wendy Allen-Rhoades
  Childhood cancer and AYA cancer research funding. We need to continue to break down regulatory walls that allow children to be the last to get access to new medications. Did you know the average years of life gained by successful cancer treatment for childhood cancer is 71?
• Tung Nguyen
  Both as clinician and researcher, the interaction between structural/social determinants of health and cancer treatment adherence and outcomes is huge! And we know so little about how to address the effect of housing and food insecurity, racism, and similar on cancer Rx outcomes
• Elizabeth Prsic
  I would love to continue to promote palliative care integration as standard of care for patients facing serious, cancer-associated illness. (Also, let’s all come together and acknowledge that inpatient medical oncology care really is it’s own thing!)
• Sarah Ro
  Congrats, Kim! Obesity related cancer mortality continues to rise. US President’s goal of cutting cancer death rate by 1/2 in 25 years must include population based obesity control. This is now feasible with increased access to obesity care and obesity Rx’s in all communities.
• Melissa Osgood
  Importance of Sci-Comm. This includes accurately sharing research updates with medical community and patients AND for doctors to take on the responsibility of sharing information in a patient-friendly (and specific manner).
• Roger Kim
  Early detection of lung cancer, the deadliest malignancy with the lowest screening rates and which negatively impacts a disproportionately high proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged Americans.
• Glioma Difuso
  Think out of the box and propose pilot trials with combinations of various treatments that each research group is studying? Immunotherapies, BNCT, oncoviruses, photodynamic, sonodynamic, CBD, THC, DHA, ONC, etc. Let’s explore innovative approaches in pediatric glioma research.
• R. Bryan Bell
  Remove barriers to clinical trial access in rural communities. Patients should not have to travel hundreds of miles to receive the most promising therapies.
  Providence, a system that treats >50k cancer patients/year across a diverse population, it is mission critical.
• Cai M. Roberts
  Thanks for engaging the Twitterverse!
  1. Getting PSA screenings covered by insurance as advocated for by American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network
  2. (Rather self serving here) Ensuring funding support for early career researchers and investigators outside the R1 university realm.
• Kylynda C. Bauer
  Welcome to NCI! Cancer prevention research and outreach, funding for systems biology approaches, neuroimmune & cancer microbiome research, focus on postdoc support
• Marcelo Bonini
  Basic research into novel mechanisms of oncogene activation – aging and the environment as drivers of tumor onset and progression – the epidemiology is clear – mechanisms not so much – thank you for your service and for asking
• Katherine Ramos
  Developing & implementing supportive care interventions for older adults + their families coping with cancer and co-occurring chronic conditions.
• Zahra M
  Thanks for asking, NCI Director!
  1) improving access to therapies for all patients
  2) common sense oncology with a focus on outcomes and value rather than “new” is better
  3) incorporation and investments into the multidisciplinary team! Ditto what Benyam Muluneh said!
• Mansour Haeryfar
  Early enough detection and more efficacious immunotherapies…
• Meenal Datta
  Bringing in perspectives, ideas, and expertise from non-traditional fields (such as engineering) to facilitate disruptive research at the bench and paradigm shifts at the bedside.
• Chris Koller
  Continued investment in the digitization and archiving of legacy data unstructured data here at NCI/NIH. Will open the doors for future AI and deep learning capabilities that could show important previously missed relationships.

Sorry if we couldn’t include all the community’s suggestions and comments.