Articles Tagged ‘public-private’

Mackall discusses the promises and challenges of pediatric cancer research

Crystal Mackall, M.D., from the Pediatric Oncology Branch in NCI’s Center for Cancer Research, discusses research into pediatric cancers: how they differ from adult cancers, unique challenges, and the importance or pursuing these rarer malignancies.

Keeping Tabs on Cancer Rates

Three women huddled around a computer screen, surrounded by SEER publications

The Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer that was released today shows continued declines in both the rate of new cancer cases and the rate of cancer deaths in the United States over the past several years. The incidence data used in the report were gathered from population-based cancer registries that participate in the NCI’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program, and/or the CDC’s National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR). Information on mortality rates comes from CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). This article explores the role of population-based cancer registries.

Private-Public Partnerships in Cancer Vaccine Research

Taxol Molecule

With the cutting edge science developments that occur at NCI, things like combination therapies are coming into play. A significant barrier is that when one company owns a particular drug which works better with an experimental drug from another company (or when trying to test the effects of a combination of two drugs, when both drugs are owned by different companies)–issues may arise when having the two groups come together to make an agreement to be able to use them collectively. Other barriers – even though NCI has platforms to try to mend these issues – include intellectual property rights [which define] who has the rights to what type of discovery. These issues depend upon whether a drug has been given to NCI from an outside [organization] to work with or [if we are testing] something that is being licensed from within. These issues can raise legal concerns and can slow things down, hindering forward development.