Expanding Public-Private Collaborations to Enhance Cancer Drug Development: A Report of the Institute of Medicine’s Workshop Series, “Implementing a National Cancer Clinical Trials System for the 21st Century”

摘要

The past 2 decades have seen significant advances in our understanding of cancer biology, revealing increasing complexity in the signaling networks that govern tumor growth, maintenance, and treatment response. There has been a tremendous response from the biopharmaceutical industry seeking to capitalize on tumor-specific features to develop drugs that improve both efficacy and safety of cancer treatment. Recently approved molecularly targeted agents include a wide variety of small molecule inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies, and emerging cell-based immunotherapies. These agents interfere with signaling pathways that drive growth and metastasis of neoplastic cells, targeting the tumor and its microenvironment. Despite this progress, cancer clinical and translational research is becoming steadily more complex as we seek to integrate these new agents into current multidisciplinary strategies for cancer treatment. Consequently, the current environment for oncology drug development holds great opportunity but also significant challenge.