NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE 2016 INNOVATION MANAGEMENT AWARD

WILDEST INNOVATION

IDEASCALE

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is the federal government's principal agency for cancer research and training. They are a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of 11 agencies that comprise the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

With a team of almost 4,000 people, the NCI coordinates the National Cancer Program, which conducts and supports research, training, health information dissemination, and other programs with respect to the cause, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer, rehabilitation from cancer, and the continuing care of cancer patients and the families of cancer patients.

During his State of the Union address on January 12, 2016, President Barack Obama announced the establishment of a Cancer Moonshot to accelerate cancer research. The initiative—led by Vice President Joe Biden—aims to make more therapies available to more patients, while also improving the ability to prevent cancer and detect it at an early stage. The overarching goal of the Cancer Moonshot is to accelerate progress against cancer and to make a decade’s worth of progress in just 5 years.

To ensure that the Cancer Moonshot's goals and approaches are grounded in the best science, President Obama called for the creation of a Blue Ribbon Panel (BRP) of experts to provide expert advice on the vision, scientific goals, and implementation of the Cancer Moonshot and to identify the top cancer research opportunities that are poised for rapid acceleration.

The National Cancer Institute launched the Cancer Research Ideas crowdsourcing website to enable the research community and the public to submit ideas on how best to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer. Submissions were reviewed weekly by the BRP as they developed the scientific direction of the Cancer Moonshot. Ideas were submitted in eight categories: cancer prevention and early detection, clinical trials, data sharing, pediatric cancer, tumor evolution and progression, implementation science, immunology and prevention, and other exceptional opportunities. The BRP reviewed the submissions both to ensure that their priorities aligned with those of the broader community and to see what ideas we might be missing.

NCI asked to hear from researchers, scientists, philanthropists, advocates, students, data scientists, members of the public, and anyone with a scientific idea or suggestion for addressing cancer research challenges and advancing progress in cancer care. NCI measured success in terms of (1) awareness, (2) consideration, (3) conversion, (4) connection and (5) advocacy. This included visits to the site, click through rate from assets, registrations and idea submissions, conversations on the site, and social media shares, respectively.

2IdeaScale Case Studies

National Cancer InstituteA Decade’s Worth of Progress in Five Years

Through the program, a public email box and phone line, NCI received more than 1,600 ideas and comments for accelerating progress against cancer — some truly novel, most substantive, sensible, and patient-centric. All were ambitious and sincere. Perhaps most inspiring about the program was the realization that the majority of the submissions echoed the discussions taking place within the Blue Ribbon Panel’s working groups. That reassured NCI that the BRP truly had been listening to the direction the research community and public want our country to go in in terms of cancer research. It also reaffirmed that soliciting ideas from the community worked for this planning effort and can work with long-term cancer research planning going forward.

As it was not the purpose of Cancer Research Ideas to select one winning submission, all of the ideas submitted were shared with the Blue Ribbon Panel. Below is a sampling of some of the most representative ideas submitted:

• Introduce the concept of “cancer concierges,” similar to patient navigators, who are highly trained to help patients find treatment options, navigate their choices, understand complex information, and enroll in clinical trials.

• Sponsor clinical trials to evaluate multiple lifestyle behavior coaching strategies to reduce the cancer burden, and expand what has been proven to work in larger populations.

• Engage public libraries as health literacy engines. Make libraries “teachers” on how to read about cancer and health, with context, to engage caregivers, patients and the public.

• Engage Obstetricians/Gynecologists to increase HPV vaccination rates. • Invest in DNA sequencing and molecular profiling of metastatic cancer. Collect metastatic

tumor samples, generate data and knowledge needed to discover all driver mutations associated with metastatic disease regardless of tumor of origin, and use that to drive better therapies for people with metastatic cancer.

• Among many other suggestions

Ideas fed the Blue Ribbon Panel’s final report that describes 10 transformative research recommendations for achieving the Cancer Moonshot's ambitious goal of making a decade's worth of progress in cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment in just 5 years. These are:

1. Establish a network for direct patient involvement 2. Create a translational science network devoted exclusively to immunotherapy 3. Develop ways to overcome resistance to therapy 4. Build a national cancer data ecosystem 5. Intensify research on the major drivers of childhood cancers 6. Minimize cancer treatment’s debilitating side effects 7. Expand use of proven prevention and early detection strategies 8. Mine past patient data to predict future patient outcomes 9. Develop a 3D cancer atlas 10. Develop new cancer technologies

You can read the Blue Ribbon Panel’s full report and watch videos about the recommendations at cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/moonshot-cancer-initiative/blue-ribbon-panel

At the close of the submission period (April 15 - July 15, 2016) the ideas and comments submitted to the site revealed several broad themes that the research community and public are urging the government to act on with an infusion of funds to speed up progress against cancer:

1. Invest in “on the cusp” breakthroughs. Fund the best science in cancer prevention vaccines, immunotherapy, metastasis research, pediatric cancer treatments, non-invasive liquid biopsies, and new imaging technologies that are proving to be effective and could be pushed to the next level.

2. Share cancer research results broadly. Require that the entire cancer community provide open, free public access to all research findings, particularly research supported by public funds.

3. Make it easier to find and enroll in cancer clinical trials. Strengthen partnerships between the NCI and community oncology practices to make clinical trials available at more community hospitals where the majority of cancer patients are treated.

4. Focus on survivors. With the number of cancer survivors growing, improve their quality of life by improving the management of symptoms and side effects, and reducing the long-term effects of cancer treatment, especially in children.

5. Build on what works. Make prevention and treatment initiatives that have been proven to work much more broadly available in underserved populations, such as HPV vaccination and colorectal cancer screening.

Cancer touches everyone. The Cancer Moonshot stresses a diversity of views, and so engagement of the public in accelerating progress against the disease is very important. Key elements led by the Vice President are trying to get people to work more closely together instead of being isolated the way that many times the research community has been in the past. Breaking down silos, therefore, was seen as critical to being able to accelerate progress because together we can make faster progress than we can separately. Through the Cancer Research Ideas platform, NCI was able to provide a place where all members of the public can feel free to submit their ideas on basic research, understanding of cancer, cancer prevention, screening, treatment and survivorship.