Acting Director Dr. Krzysztof Ptak’s words reverberated throughout the meeting room—and the heads of several of us—during the National Cancer Institute’s Office of Cancer Centers update on the final day of the 2024 Association of American Cancer Institutes/Cancer Center Administrators Forum Annual Meeting in Chicago.
Young adults with cancer are starting to break the silence about grief. Most people think of grief following the death of a loved one, but grief can accompany any event that disrupts or challenges our sense of normalcy or ourselves.1 During this first week of December, National Grief Awareness Week, we can raise awareness about grief in young adults with cancer to help ensure that no one grieves alone.
Photo credit: Oleksiy Samsonov; Kyiv, March 2022In Ukraine, a country of around 44 million people, over 1.3 million individuals currently live with cancer.
Having had the honor and pleasure to lead an NCI-designated cancer center for several years, I would like to share my thoughts on this small yet unique set of institutes and their value to NCI and the nation.
It is rare that an ABC Movie of the Week endures. Buzz Kulik’s 1971 “Brian’s Song” is a notable exception.
The National Academy of Medicine recognized the value of correlative science in publicly funded clinical trials in 2010, recommending “the incorporation of innovative science into cancer clinical trials through the support and use of biorepositories.”
I was a practicing pediatric hematologist oncologist and researcher for 21 years. As a doctor, it was a tremendous privilege to be invited into the lives of patients and families dealing with blood cancers and be entrusted with their care. As a researcher, it was incredibly rewarding to help bring more effective blood cancer therapies to kids.
In this country, we have museums devoted to natural history, culture, space exploration, sports, civil rights, and all manner of creative expression. But surprisingly, one of our nation’s most important human endeavors—the quest to translate scientific discoveries into medical advances—lacks a national venue that captures the drama of its story.
Sometimes profoundly important public health opportunities are discovered by accident.
Twenty years ago, the discovery of epidermal growth factor receptor mutations as drivers of tumorigenesis and viable targets for therapeutic intervention marked the beginning of a new era in lung cancer diagnosis and treatment. Since then, the field has made remarkable progress towards developing more effective targeted treatments and immunotherapies that have significantly improved patient outcomes and survival.
