Reflecting on the golden age of cancer research

摘要

50 years after the National Cancer Act was signed into law, Nature Cancer spoke with the National Cancer Institute Director Dr Ned Sharpless about the progress in cancer research and care, the complications of the pandemic and what to expect in the future. NS: The 50th anniversary of the NCA is a good time to be having this discussion. The NCA did not create the National Cancer Institute (NCI)— the NCI dates to the 1930s — but, in some ways it created the modern NCI, by providing funding that allowed us to support more science, and by providing for new authorities and capabilities, such as the Frederick National Laboratory and the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program, which is the most widely used database of cancer statistics. The Cancer Center program also existed before the NCA, but the NCA really made it into the modern-era Cancer Center program. It also created the modern National Clinical Trials Network that we have in the United States for cancer research. Most importantly, the NCA made cancer a disease we could talk about as a nation. It removed a lot of the stigma surrounding cancer and changed it into something that politicians and advocates would speak about emphatically. You could also say that the NCA introduced modern cancer advocacy in the United States.