About Us

Friends of Cancer Research Video

Narrated by Academy Award Winning Actor and Cancer Survivor Michael Douglas

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Friends of Cancer Research is our country’s leading voice in advocating for policies and solutions that will get treatments to patients in the safest and quickest way possible.

Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) develops groundbreaking partnerships and creates a more open dialogue among both public and private sectors and tears down the barriers that stand in the way of conquering cancer.  By collaborating with premier academic research centers, professional societies, and other advocacy organizations, Friends is able to accelerate innovation.

We work closely with government agencies (FDA, NCI, NIH, HHS) and congressional leadership to create educational, policy, and scientific approaches to improve health outcomes and cancer care.  As a respected independent think tank and advocacy organization, Friends is able to cut through bureaucratic red tape, put aside partisan politics, and engage all stakeholders, producing real results.

We have made great strides in the fight against cancer but challenges still exist:

• 79% of cancer research grants go unfunded each year
• It still takes more than 12 years for newly discovered treatments to get from the research bench to the patient’s bedside

Imagine what discoveries could be made and the lives that could be saved if more grants were funded, if the barriers between discovering new treatments and getting them to a patient’s bedside were overcome.

We are working every day to make new treatments a reality for patients everywhere.

Learn about Friends' work in developing the FDA's new Breakthrough Therapy designation HERE

Follow the progress of Friends' revolutionary Master Protocol clinical trial design HERE

Read some of our recent work:

Eliminating Breast Cancer Health Disparities: Communicating to At-Risk Populations

2012 Conference on Clinical Cancer Research