NCI opens online platform to submit ideas about research for Cancer Moonshot

The National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health has launched an online platform to enable the research community and the public to submit ideas on the National Cancer Moonshot efforts. Submissions will be considered by the Blue Ribbon Panel (BRP) of scientific experts and patient advocates as they develop the scientific direction at NCI for the initiative.

The announcement of this online platform coincides with the opening of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Ideas for advancing progress against cancer may be submitted at CancerResearchIdeas.cancer.gov.

The Blue Ribbon Panel, whose members were announced on April 4 and which held its first meeting on April 11, will serve as a working group of the presidentially appointed National Cancer Advisory Board (NCAB). One of the first actions of the panel was to discuss the establishment of several proposed working groups to focus on specific topic areas.

Ideas, which may range from cancer prevention to advancing understanding of the origins of cancer to reducing cancer health disparities, may be submitted in the following areas:

• Cancer clinical trials
• Data sharing
• Dissemination and population sciences
• Immunotherapy, combination therapy, and immunoprevention
• Pediatric cancer
• Tumor evolution and progression
• Other exceptional opportunities

The ideas that are submitted will be discussed and considered by the proposed working groups and the Blue Ribbon Panel as they deliberate about cancer research priorities and opportunities over the next few months. The panel will report its findings to the NCAB later this summer.

“The goal of the Moonshot Initiative is to accelerate progress in the fight against cancer by swiftly advancing knowledge from cutting-edge basic research to new prevention and treatment strategies for patients,” said NCI Acting Director Douglas Lowy, M.D. “The community involvement that the initiative garners will allow us to consider novel, creative ideas that might not otherwise have come to NCI’s attention.”

The feedback platform is just one way in which the public can provide ideas for accelerating progress in the fight against cancer through this initiative. Ideas can also be submitted by email (cancerresearch@nih.gov) or by calling NCI’s Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

To sign up for updates on the online platform and other aspects of the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative, please visit the initiative’s main website (www.cancer.gov/moonshot-cancer-initiative).

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