History of the Cancer Moonshot - NCI - National Cancer Institute (.gov)

Blue Ribbon Panel

At the Blue Ribbon Panel's (BRP) first (virtual) meeting on April 11, 2016, panel members agreed to establish seven working groups to focus on major topic areas. The working groups began with broad discussions of the state of the field for their respective topics and considered more than 1,600 ideas submitted by the members and the broader cancer community at large. (Read the report about the public idea submission site.)

Blue Ribbon Panel 2016 Overview

The BRP presented the working groups' recommendations in a final report to the NCAB in September 2016. Download the complete report.

The BRP report describes 10 transformative research recommendations for achieving the Cancer Moonshot's goal of making a decade's worth of progress in cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment in just 5 years.

• establish a network for direct patient involvement
  Engage patients to contribute their comprehensive tumor profile data to expand knowledge about what therapies work, in whom, and in which types of cancer.
• create a translational science network devoted exclusively to immunotherapy
  Establish a cancer immunotherapy network to discover why immunotherapy is effective in some patients but not in others.
• develop ways to overcome cancer’s resistance to therapy
  Identify therapeutic targets to overcome drug resistance through studies that determine the mechanisms that lead cancer cells to become resistant to previously effective treatments.
• build a National Cancer Data Ecosystem
  Create a national ecosystem for sharing and analyzing cancer data so that researchers, clinicians, and patients will be able to contribute data, which will facilitate efficient data analysis.
• intensify research on the major drivers of childhood cancers
  Improve our understanding of fusion oncoproteins in pediatric cancer and use new preclinical models to develop inhibitors that target them.
• minimize cancer treatment’s debilitating side effects
  Accelerate the development of guidelines for routine monitoring and management of patient-reported symptoms to minimize debilitating side effects of cancer and its treatment.
• expand use of proven cancer prevention and early detection strategies
  Reduce cancer risk and cancer health disparities through approaches in development, testing, and broad adoption of proven prevention strategies.
• mine past patient data to predict future patient outcomes
  Predict response to standard treatments through retrospective analysis of patient specimens.
• develop a 3-D cancer atlas
  Create dynamic 3-D maps of human tumor evolution to document the genetic lesions and cellular interactions of each tumor as it evolves from a precancerous lesion to advanced cancer.
• develop new cancer technologies
  Develop new enabling cancer technologies to characterize tumors and test therapies.

NCI established implementation teams that align with each of the BRP recommendations. The teams identified opportunities and developed initiatives for funding that address each of the recommendations.