NEWS

U.K. Initiative to Boost Translational Research

Lewis Rowett

In January the British government announced the centers that have been selected to make up the National Translational Cancer Research Network (NTRAC), an initiative proposed in 2000 as part of the National Health Service Cancer Plan that will facilitate and enhance translational cancer research in the United Kingdom.

The goal of the network is to increase the number of treatments and diagnostic tests going into early clinical trials and increase access to those trials across the United Kingdom. Only an estimated 10% of cancer patients in the United Kingdom are enrolled in clinical trials.

The network will incorporate eight existing centers of both scientific and clinical research, which were selected by the U.K. Department of Health in partnership with the cancer research charities and industry. The NTRAC centers are all engaged in translational research, which encompasses and integrates work in the laboratory and the clinic.

These centers are located in Birmingham, Leeds, Oxford, Newcastle, Southampton, the Royal Marsden Hospital in Surrey, Imperial College London, and University College London. Each center will receive annually, on average, £200,000 (about US $290,000) for direct costs and a further £50,000 (US $72,000) for indirect costs.

Speaking before a parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology in December, Mike Richards, M.D., England’s national cancer director and author of the NHS Cancer Plan, responded to the suggestion that the funding was "virtually peanuts" by saying, "I think we will be able to achieve a lot with it. Remember that that is not the basic funding of those centers. Those centers are funded from a variety of different sources, including [Medical Research Council] funds [and] funds from the cancer charities."

The NTRAC funding is earmarked for the development of infrastructure and expertise with the aim of integrating cancer research in the universities with those providing cancer services within the NHS.

"We already have very high-class research located in a number of cities around the country, and we wanted to build on that model rather than replace it," Richards said. "The cancer charities concurred with this view that what was needed was an organization that would take a strategic overview and ensure that the key funders were working effectively together."

David Lane, Ph.D., professor of surgery and molecular oncology at the University of Dundee and chair of the NTRAC Steering Committee, noted that the initial success of the network can largely be attributed to the combination of centers selected to participate in the program.

"Although funding for the network centers has only come on stream [in April], we are already seeing emerging themes of collaboration around gene therapy, immunotherapy, small molecules, and platform technologies," said Lane. "Each of the centers appears to be embracing this sense of network that lies at the very heart of that which we hope to achieve."

Expansion of the network is also a possibility, and NTRAC officials are already working with centers in Cambridge and Manchester with a view to their becoming network members.

David Kerr, M.D., professor of therapeutic sciences and clinical pharmacology at the University of Oxford and director of NTRAC, said he thinks that for NTRAC to fulfill its potential, it will have to challenge and change traditional ways of working in the research community, replacing competition with collaboration and cooperation.

"There is no way to force collaboration or coerce scientific innovation," he said. "But if we can establish a framework for a range of different institutions to come together and share facilities or equipment or patients or samples or reagents or, even, ideas, then there is a real potential for the network to be greater than the sum of its parts."

Even so, the bottom line for him is clear: "If we can demonstrate that NTRAC has contributed with other partners to getting more novel therapeutic and diagnostic agents into clinical trial and that the network evolves to benefit cancer patients, then we will have made real progress," he said.



             
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