The goals of the SPECS programs are:
These multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary teams include investigators from the Clinical Co-operative Groups, SPOREs, Cancer Centers, NCI intramural, the National Laboratories, community hospitals and individual academic institutions in the US and Europe.
Through a competitive Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) the Cancer Diagnosis Program of the National Cancer Institute is pleased to announce the following projects have been selected for the SPECS II phase of the SPECS Program:
Project summaries from SPECS I funding awards can be found here.
If you require any further information or have questions regarding the SPECS program, please contact Dr. Tracy Lively (livelyt@mail.nih.gov).
NCI’s SPECS Program Explores Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer
NCI Cancer Bulletin
July 5, 2006
http://www.cancer.gov/ncicancerbulletin/NCI_Cancer_Bulletin_070506/page3
In Memoriam: NCI’s Dr. James W. Jacobson
NCI Cancer Bulletin
January 10, 2010
http://www.cancer.gov/ncicancerbulletin/011210/page11
TARGET
NCI’s Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments (TARGET) Initiative seeks to identify valid therapeutic targets in childhood cancers so new, more effective treatments can be developed.
Director’s Challenge: Toward a Molecular Classification of Cancer (1998-2004)
At a time when technologies for comprehensive molecular analysis of human tissues were still emerging, the investigators of the NCI Director's Challenge consortium achieved proof of principle that profiling the activity of large numbers of genes in a sample of tumor tissue could provide meaningful information about the clinical outcome for a cancer patient. Several of the signatures discovered by Director’s Challenge investigators have been further developed through the SPECS initiative and are entering prospective clinical trials and commercial development.