The excerpt below describes how NCI plans to apply nanotechnology to the treatment of cancer.
Source: Technology Backgrounder - Nanotechnology In Cancer: Tools To Relieve Human Suffering
The Cancer Nanotechnology Plan (CNPlan) is a focused strategy to capitalize on past NCI investments in nanotechnology and direct those and new efforts on the immediate mission of the NCI. The plan carries an aggressive timeline and specific milestones to achieve the NCI goals. The projects initiated under the CNPlan will be integrated, milestone driven, and product oriented. The efforts will include targeted objectives and goals, and will use a project-management approach to help capitalize on today's opportunities to create the tools that both cancer researchers and clinicians need.
Based on the input NCI solicited from researchers and clinicians, the cancer community will be extremely involved in the implementation of the plan. NCI will continue to utilize traditional funding mechanisms to further promising research, and will supplement these efforts with a targeted approach that stresses interdisciplinary team efforts involving partners from across the cancer research and nanotechnology development communities.
The NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer is a comprehensive, systematized initiative encompassing the public and private sectors, designed to accelerate the application of the best capabilities of nanotechnology to cancer. The Alliance is one of the first steps in implementing the CNPlan and focuses on applying research and translating it into clinical products in six key programmatic areas:
- Molecular imaging and early detection - diagnostics to detect cancer in the earliest, most easily treatable, pre-symptomatic stage
- In vivo imaging - targeted contrast agents that improve the resolution of cancer and address the diversity of tumors at the single cell level
- Reporters of efficacy - systems to provide real-time assessments of therapeutic and surgical efficacy
- Multifunctional therapeutics - multifunctional targeted devices to deliver multiple therapeutic agents directly to cancer cells
- Prevention and control - agents to monitor predictive molecular changes and prevent precancerous cells from becoming malignant; and
- Research enablers - research tools to identify new biological targets, opening new pathways for research
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