ALEXANDRIA, VA – The American Society of Clinical Oncology has issued a detailed prescription for transforming clinical cancer research in the United States and speeding the creation of new therapies for patients. Healthcare information is at the core as a way to integrate clinical research and patient care.

ASCO identifies specific action steps the organization and other institutions must take over the next three years to move the field closer to the vision of the report. Among several initiatives, ASCO is working with health IT developers and other partners to develop a rapid learning system for cancer care.

As ASCO describes it, this new system would harness cutting-edge information technology to connect cancer patients and their healthcare providers to a central knowledge base; collect and synthesize information from millions of physician and patient experiences in a secure environment; and provide an unparalleled, high-quality dataset for researchers to track the real-world outcomes of cancer therapy and identify new ideas for research.

In the report, “Accelerating Progress Against Cancer: ASCO’s Blueprint for Transforming Clinical and Translational Cancer Research,” released Nov. 3, ASCO lays out its vision for transforming clinical and translational research to deliver more effective and personalized cancer therapies faster. The report also articulates recommendations for achieving that vision over the next several years and ASCO’s commitment to enacting the recommendations.

The report comes 40 years after President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act in December 1971. That landmark legislation led to major new U.S. investments in cancer research, which spurred significant increases in survival and a revolution in our biological understanding of cancer. ASCO’s report is intended to guide researchers, cancer advocates and policymakers as they seek to build on that progress and address a projected increase in the nation’s cancer burden over the coming years.

“Advances in cancer prevention, detection and treatment have already extended the lives of millions of adults and children living with cancer – but the critical question is, ‘Where do we go from here?’” said ASCO President Michael P. Link, MD. “With the cancer burden growing rapidly around the globe, millions of future patients are depending on the answer. This report aims to set us on a path to deliver the new therapies that patients urgently need.”

The report was developed under the guidance of three leading oncologists who served as executive editors: Mark G. Kris, MD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; Neal J. Meropol, MD, of University Hospitals Case Medical Center & Case Western Reserve University; and Eric P. Winer, MD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Recommendations for the future
ASCO’s Blueprint presents what ASCO officials say is an achievable vision for the next decade, in which cancer research and patient care become significantly more targeted, more efficient and more effective. To help achieve this vision, the report provides real-world recommendations to policymakers and the cancer community, including ASCO, in three key areas:

1. Establish a new approach to therapeutic development, driven by our more thorough understanding of cancer biology and the advent of new technologies.

• Identify and prioritize the molecular targets that have the greatest promise to improve survival
• Incentivize collaboration to encourage industry and researchers to pursue high-priority targeted therapies and diagnostics in combination
• Ensure more aggressive and timely development of biomarkers and diagnostic tests to guide treatment decisions and speed research

2. Design smarter, faster clinical trials to provide evidence for effective treatments targeted to patients most likely to benefit, sooner:

• Prioritize trials with the greatest potential benefits for patients, or that address clear unmet needs; shift away from trials that promise only marginal improvements in care
• Develop shared standards for flexible trial designs that allow researchers to demonstrate results with smaller populations defined by specific molecular characteristics
• Select trial participants primarily based on molecular characteristics, to ensure that only those who are most likely to benefit are included, and that patients aren’t excluded from trials because of health conditions that aren’t relevant
• Revitalize the National Cancer Institute's Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program, which has been instrumental in much of the progress achieved against cancer to date. ASCO supports the continued efforts by the NCI, the Groups, and other stakeholders to fully implement recommendations issued by the Institute of Medicine in 2010 to revitalize this essential component of the nation’s cancer research system.

3. Harness advances in health information technology to seamlessly integrate clinical research and patient care:

• Use HIT tools, including EHRs and “rapid learning” systems, to allow researchers to draw upon the wealth of real-world patient information that is now locked away in file cabinets and unconnected computer systems
• Standardize EHRs by defining functional requirements, harmonizing data fields and ensuring secure patient and provider access to information at any time
• Develop industry standards for working with, storing and capturing information from bio-specimens (tissue and blood samples), which are essential to identifying and evaluating new therapeutic targets
• Ensure that advances in HIT protect patients and researchers by examining the need for revised standards for patient privacy, information sharing and intellectual property protections to support HIT innovation

“With the recent explosion in our scientific knowledge about cancer, we can finally begin to solve some of the toughest challenges in cancer care,” said Link. “We could begin to see major progress in treating even the most difficult cancers – but the speed with which we do this is dependent on modernizing the nation’s cancer research system for the molecular era.”

Over the next three years, ASCO plans to work with partners throughout the research community to develop more detailed plans of action for each of the three areas covered in this report.

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