Mission

The mission of the Translational Research Program is to integrate scientific advancements in the understanding of the biology of human cancer with the development of new interventions for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer patients or populations at risk for cancer, by fostering broad interdisciplinary investigations that focus on bringing discoveries from the laboratory to the clinic, and coordinating resources of the National Cancer Institute with those of academia, industry, and non-profit organizations/foundations to reduce cancer incidence, morbidity and mortality, to extend survival, and to increase the quality of life of cancer patients.

This is accomplished by:

1. Planning, advising, coordinating, evaluating, and supporting the Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPOREs), which use the P50 grant funding mechanism, to translate novel scientific discoveries from the laboratory and/or population studies to the clinic for testing in humans with cancer, to determine the biological basis for clinical observations, and to use specimens from clinical studies to determine correlations between biomarkers and outcomes in patients.
2. Encouraging and facilitating collaborations between SPOREs, Cancer Centers, other NCI/NIH funded mechanisms and programs, and outside organizations, to increase cross-fertilization of ideas, leverage resources, reduce duplication, and ensure access of resources to projects and investigators.
3. Establishing high-quality organ-specific tumor specimen banks to provide research resources for the cancer research community.
4. Maintaining the Developmental Research Program and Career Development Program of the SPOREs to promote pilot or high risk/high payoff projects, and to ensure the development of promising researchers new to translational research.
5. Supporting research in high incidence cancers as well as in rare cancers.
6. Inviting advice of patient advocates who support translational science in cancer.