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JULY 2004 News in this issue:
>NIH
Funding Update
3299 K Street, NW,
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Welcome to the July 2004
issue of the Friends of Cancer Research Newsletter.
For more information and mid-month breaking news, please monitor the
Friends' website at www.focr.org. Congress has yet to finalize a Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bill. In mid-July, the House Appropriations Committee did approve an FY 05 appropriations bill that included $28.44 billion for the NIH, a 2.8% increase of $782 million, of which the National Cancer Institute would receive $4.870 billion, an increase of $130.7 million. Action has yet to be taken in the Senate, however, where it likely is going to be very difficult to move the Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bill any time in the near future without external support for such action. It also will take significant pressure to increase the NIH funding level in the Senate above the House Appropriations Committee's mark of just under 3%. It is particularly important that the federal commitment to extramural research is increased or at least maintained as the availability of overall research grant dollars become more scarce. One disconcerting trend was discussed in a recent Wall Street Journal article by Bernard Wysocki Jr titled, "Fewer Grants Force Younger Scientists to Leave Academia." Wysocki sites a 10% decrease in grants being funded over the last two years, and says young scientists are most affected. This in turn has led many innovators to leave research for consulting jobs instead.
On July 16th, HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson announced plans to consolidate aspects of the FDA's oncology activities. Friends' Chairperson Ellen Sigal attended the event along with several other representatives from the cancer community. The FDA will create a new Office of Oncology Drug Products with control over an array of biologics, drugs and imaging technologies. These proposed changes will consolidate much of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Review 's (CDER) review authority over cancer products into a single office dedicated entirely to oncology. Such expanded and centralized jurisdiction is intended to streamline the review process so that safer and more effective drugs can get to patients sooner. The new office will be led by an oncology expert with an understanding of drug development identified through a national search scheduled to begin later this summer. As a subset of the office, the FDA plans to create an “Oncology Program” designed to better coordinate and integrate cancer-related activities throughout the agency such as regulatory policy and cross-agency consultations. We feel that this FDA announcement is a vital first step in an on-going effort to enhance the efficiency, predictability, and consistency of the clinical development path for state of the art cancer research. Moreover, we are encouraged by the FDA’s plans to provide an evaluation mechanism that will gauge the effectiveness of these initial reforms for improving the FDA’s approach to oncology products. For more details, visit the FDA's website at and read our special news alert.
Pictured from right to left: Susan Dentzer (the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer), Dr. Homer Pearce (Eli Lilly), Dr. Rick Pazdur (FDA), and Clifton Leaf (Fortune Magazine). WASHINGTON- Friends of Cancer Research, in conjunction with the House Cancer Caucus and the Senate Cancer Coalition, hosted a panel discussion on July 13th dealing with cancer prevention and early detection with some of the nation's foremost cancer experts .
Introductory speaker Carolyn "Bo" Aldige (pictured at left), President of the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation, set the stage with a call for a paradigm shift in the public's attitude toward cancer. A common message throughout the event was that rather than counting on 'magic bullet drugs' to cure established disease, the shortest and most effective path to eliminating death and suffering due to cancer might be to avoid the disease in the first place, or to treat it 'presumptively' before it is even diagnosed. Panelist Dr. Michael Sporn, a cancer prevention pioneer from Dartmouth Medical School, said one critical priority is public education about the fact that cancer is a chronic process which exists for years before it is detected. Sporn stressed, "disease precedes symptoms for years, and is vastly more curable than advanced disease." According to Dr. Homer Pearce, who has devoted decades to the development of cancer fighting drugs at Eli Lilly, “We must acknowledge that at any give moment, we all probably have at least a couple of cells in our bodies that are cancerous, and that rather than responding in fear, we should be motivated to do what we must to prevent them from developing into the disease we commonly call cancer.”
Representative Sue Myrick (R-NC) (pictured at right), a cancer survivor and special guest at the forum, emphasized the importance of identifying useful "protein marker" tests as a tool for early detection. Clifton Leaf, Fortune Magazine's Executive editor and author of the recent Fortune cover story "Why We're Losing the War on Cancer (and How to Win It), seconded Representative Myrick’s call for the development of biomarkers and other modes of risk assessment and early detection. Asserting that too many anti-cancer dollars are devoted to treatment of advanced and often incurable disease, Mr. Leaf suggested they should be more focused on preventing or promptly detecting the cancers that will otherwise strike one out of every two men, and one out of every three women.
Dr. Anna Barker (pictured above left, seated next to Dr. Michael Sporn with Susan Dentzer at the podium), Deputy Director of the National Cancer Institute, provided details on cutting edge science, such as nanotechnology and micro-imaging that will “translate into cures" through collaboration between the NCI, the FDA, pharmaceutical companies, and others. Dr. Rick Pazdur, Director of the FDA’s Oncology Division, cited the Agency's role in balancing risk against benefit and cautioned that the FDA could not prop up 'shaky science' no matter how promising the treatment. Moderated by Susan Denzter, the health correspondent for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the panel also debated the value of intellectual property rights and patent protection. These issues are important because they affect industry's ability to recoup the enormous costs of new drug discovery, development, testing, and approval. Following the event, Clifton Leaf, fielded questions from the audience on his recent Fortune cover story. *All town hall photographs credited to M. Gatty.
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