National Plan Unveiled to Combat Cancer

The National Cancer Plan, unveiled on April 3, outlines a series of strategic priorities aimed at reducing death, preventing disease, and improving the lives of cancer survivors.

With an emphasis on screening, prevention, and patient support, the plan builds on objectives set out in the Cancer Moonshot initiative, which President Joe Biden reignited last year around the ambitious target of slashing the cancer death rate in half over 25 years (Cancer Discov 2022;12:876).

But the new plan goes further (http://nationalcancerplan.cancer.gov). It also calls on researchers to develop new treatments for all types of cancer, address disparities in cancer care, and increase opportunities for participation in clinical trials. Data sharing and workforce diversity were listed as priorities as well.

Christopher Friese, PhD, RN, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, describes the framework as “a bold next step to align forces toward a shared goal.” The plan should help “to bring together communities, clinicians, health systems, and the public and private sectors to stimulate research, interventions, and policy development that will help patients and families,” he says.

Friese is part of the 18-member National Cancer Advisory Board, which provides guidance to the NCI director and voted unanimously last week to accept the National Cancer Plan. “The next step is for each of us to dig into the plan details and commit to advancing these important goals in our respective areas of influence,” he says.

Cancer researchers lauded the broad scope of the plan. It is “ambitious and motivational,” says Chi Van Dang, MD, PhD, of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in New York, NY.

Many of the same recommendations appeared in earlier reports, including one that Dang co-authored in 2016 as a member of the initial Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel, he notes. Still, seeing them recast “in new light” helps bring renewed attention to the issues, Dang says. “I applaud any efforts to bolster cancer research to mitigate the burden of cancer.”

However, Dang notes that there are challenges associated with merging mandates between research agencies like the NCI and other government branches, such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), that typically determine health policies. The responsibility of equity and access to care should lie with CMS, he says. “NCI has no teeth to make this happen, particularly around issues of social inequities, which won't be solved by additional research.”

Others thought that the NCI's plan could have gone a little further in prioritizing fundamental bench investigations.

“I would have liked to see more explicit focus on basic science as the engine for discovery and translation,” says Wafik El-Deiry, MD, PhD, director of the Legorreta Cancer Center at Brown University in Providence, RI. “This is too important and needs to be part of the plan with ongoing engagement and challenge to the basic scientists.”

NCI Director Monica Bertagnolli, MD, will discuss the National Cancer Plan in greater detail on April 17 at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023 in Orlando, FL. –Elie Dolgin