The 2025 AACI/CCAF Annual Meeting is being held October 19-21, 2025, at the Salamander in Washington, DC.
Presented jointly by the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) and the Cancer Center Administrators Forum (CCAF), this three-day convening brings together cancer-center leadership with national research, advocacy, industry, and government stakeholders.
Wafik S. El-Deiry, Director of Legorreta Cancer Center at Brown University and Chair of the WIN Consortium in Cancer Personalized Medicine, shared some more highlights from AACI/CCAF Annual Meeting:
Joaquin Castro’s speech at AACI/CCAF 2025
“US Representative Joaquin Castro from Texas, who is a cancer survivor, spoke this morning at the 2025 annual AACI (Association of American Cancer Institutes) meeting.
He shared his diagnosis of a neuroendocrine tumor of the small bowel with metastasis to the liver, leading to surgery in February 2023 at MD Anderson Cancer Center. During his recovery, he walked around the medical floor and saw TV stations that suggested both Democrats and Republicans were in the hospital.
After he was discharged, he had to take a prescribed injection every 28 days and when he saw an itemized bill with $27,000 per injection, he realized the uninsured or underinsured would not be able to get their shot. He said it was the same for other diseases.
Congressman Castro told the audience, ‘You represent so many Americans and people around the world hope…we can’t do it by cutting research.’ “
The youngest woman as a US Senator
“US Senator Katie Boyd Britt from Alabama was introduced by Dr. Barry Sleckman as the youngest woman to be sworn in on January 3, 2023 as a US Senator and said her legislative and advocacy achievements already match some senior members. This includes facilitating breast cancer screening for young women and release of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for research.
Her advocacy is working to prevent cuts to government funding of research and allowing an increase. Her efforts are trying to do away with front-loading government grants in order to keep labs of young scientists from shutting down.
Senator Britt praised the O’Neal Cancer Center as second to none with Dr. Sleckman leading the way.
She shared that she lost her grandmother 15 years ago. Her grandmother met challenges head on but the cancer changed their family.
Senator Britt told the audience ‘You give hope to families from coast to coast. It’s an honor to stand shoulder to shoulder with you. I believe in America finding cures, I believe in research.’
She invited Dr. Sleckman as a witness over the summer to fight for NIH funding to ‘get dollars out the door and in the hands of people who can truly make a difference.’
She dedicated her 2025 AACI Public Service Award to her grandmother. She said to the audience: ‘We need you and we believe in you.’ “
Protecting Time for Cancer Clinical Research
“A great session entitled ’13th Annual AACI Physician Clinical Leadership Initiative Meeting: Protecting Time for Cancer Clinical Research’ was held with expert clinical investigators presenting and discussing survey results and strategies. The survey data is worth studying and applying insights to improve protected time for clinical investigators.
Mentoring is an important part of this as is institutional support and recognition of some pain points. Cancer centers should discuss strategies for impact including incentives, education and mentoring. Some formal processes at division level and cancer center make sense and cancer center leaders need to incorporate implementation plans in strategic planning.”
“Dr. Randall Holcombe from The University of Vermont Cancer Center shared definitions of categories of faculty involved in clinical research and shared results of a Survey of AACI Cancer Centers in 2018. This included proportion of time spent in clinical research by different categories of faculty, funding sources for protected time for clinical research, and incentive plans for clinician investigators and academic clinicians.”
results of a new AACI 20-question, descriptive survey modified from the 2018 PCLI survey
“Dr. Karen Reckamp, MD at Cedars-Sinai Cancer, shared results of a new AACI 20-question, descriptive survey modified from the 2018 PCLI survey sent to 95 academic cancer center members in 2024 (60 completed submissions (63%)).
The new survey covered proportion of time spent in clinical research this time showing that clinician investigators are doing less clinical research while physician-scientists are doing more. Dr. Reckamp suggested this maybe due to everyone being in clinic more vs 2018.
The survey questioned sources of funding for protected time for clinical research and revealed that cancer centers provide most of the support with increasing levels by hospital/health system, 50% provide support for protected time for 3 years or more, while 18% do not provide support.
The survey asked about faculty expectations and captured the top 3 which were development of investigator-initiated trials, accrual of patients to clinical trials, and being PI on extramural grants or contracts.
Interestingly, mentoring was seen as less important. Information on incentive plans was captured for clinically active faculty. Increasingly incentives are based on wRVUs, less than half of plans include non-wRVU metrics, and there is less alignment with stated priorities.”
Benchmarks for Academic Oncology Faculty
“Dr. Claire Verschraegen at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center-James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute spoke about Benchmarks for Academic Oncology Faculty (Clinical Workload by Physician Category), NCCN Survey, and an important Ohio State University Assessment of Academic Effort for Clinical Trials Among Oncology Faculty.
This ultimately provided information that clinical investigators spend 25 hours per week on different aspects including translation, getting samples to right labs, answering 120 emails per week that needed answering.
She suggested a need to think deeply about this time commitment and advocated that all cancer centers should recognize this activity and what it takes to get it done.”
S. Gail Eckhardt on the Oncology Industrial Complex
“Dr. S. Gail Eckhardt at the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine spoke about The Oncology Industrial Complex (OIC).
OIC represents the supply side of cancer therapy (hospitals, industry, insurance companies, etc) and the influence it has on the missions of the academic cancer center in patient care, education, and research.
Dr. Eckhardt described Specific Pressures of the OIC on these Missions and suggested that academic clinical investigators are vulnerable to collateral damage from the OIC.
She described the 2024 ASCO Academic Career Expectations Working Group (Eric Winer, Chair) that published recommendations in JCO in 2025 (Winer EP et al. J Clin Oncol. 2025 Jun 10;43(17):2017-2023).”
AACI CRI: CTO Benchmarking Surveys
“Dr. Thomas J. George, Jr., at the University of Florida Health Cancer Center, spoke about AACI CRI: CTO Benchmarking Surveys.
A report was published in JCO Oncology Practice.”
“Dr. Joann Sweasy moderated a session entitled ‘New Horizons in Care‘ with Dr. Marc Benayoun at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center who spoke about theranostics and Dr. Clifford Cho at University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center who spoke about histotropsy.”
You can also read the 1st part of AACI 2025 highlights on OncoDaily.
