World Cancer Research Day – Don’t Stand Still. We Won’t.

Sep 20, 2017

By Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FASCO, FACP, FSCT, ASCO Chief Medical Officer, Senior Vice President, Center for Research & Analytics (CENTRA)

On September 24th, ASCO is proud to join with other leading cancer organizations around the world in recognizing World Cancer Research Day, a global initiative that aims to raise awareness about the critical importance of cancer research.  

Research is a core component of ASCO’s mission and vision to “create a world where cancer is prevented or cured, and every survivor is healthy.” Practice-changing approaches to cancer treatment stem from the meticulous research and extraordinary contributions of cancer researchers and patients worldwide.

Thanks to cancer research, we’re constantly gaining remarkable insights that better shape how we understand and treat cancer. From new strategies to prevent cancer to using the body’s own immune system to fight it, to improving survivorship care, cancer research has drastically transformed the field of oncology in the last 50 years.  It is worth noting that even as cancer rates in lower-resource countries have risen, research has also helped us to discover new approaches to delivering quality cancer care in those settings.  For this reason, ASCO and its Conquer Cancer Foundation are proud to offer new funding opportunities like the International Innovation Grants.

ASCO not only supports cancer research in many ways, we also conduct it. An example is ASCO’s first-ever clinical trial that evaluates new uses for targeted therapies outside of FDA approved indications in patients with advanced cancer: the Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR) Study. By learning how these therapies perform in non-approved indications based on a patient’s tumor genomic profile, we can glean more insights on potential new uses for these treatments. While TAPUR is recruiting patients only in the US, international collaborators based in the Netherlands, Canada, and France have expanded the global reach of this study through research networks active in 15 different countries. This not only benefits patients, but will greatly accelerate learning about new uses for cancer treatments in tumors with rare genomic alterations.

Progress against cancer is being made on so many fronts. Don’t stand still, join us in supporting World Cancer Research Day by signing the World Declaration for Research on Cancer and sharing why cancer research is important to you. 

Hear more from your colleagues on why cancer research is important to them and join the conversation on social media by sharing how cancer research has impacted your life with the hashtag #WorldCancerResearchDay and by commenting below.


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