Abstract 3500: NCI's Provocative Questions Initiative

Abstract In 2011, the NCI Director, Dr. Harold Varmus, created the Provocative Questions (PQ) initiative to encourage imaginative, bold approaches designed to tackle perplexing and previously neglected areas of cancer research. Based upon workshops and discussions with the extramural cancer research community and NCI program directors, a set of 24 questions and accompanying requests for applications (RFAs) were developed, addressing diverse topics in cancer risk and prevention, tumor development, and cancer detection, diagnosis, and treatment. In order to stimulate innovative hypotheses and approaches, the “power of the ideas” was heavily weighted with a de-emphasis on preliminary data. In the first year of the initiative, the NCI awarded 56 unique proposals, totaling $21.5 million of research support via the R01 and R21 mechanisms. Building upon the 2011 RFAs and adjusting to changes in the research landscape, 24 revised questions were developed for the 2012 RFAs with a commitment of up to $30 million in support. The NCI released the 2013 RFAs in September 2013 with a revised set of 20 questions, including new questions related to clinical effectiveness. Several PQ-supported research projects funded in the first year of the initiative will be highlighted in order to demonstrate the breadth of topics and high level of innovation supported by the initiative. Projects will be selected from the four main PQ thematic areas to provide a sense of the many diverse approaches being used to answer the selected PQ. In addition, trends and criteria from awarded proposals will be presented to provide insight to potential applicants regarding the outcomes of the program to date. Through engagement of the cancer research community, the PQ initiative seeks to continually leverage scientific advances to address currently unsolved, understudied questions in cancer, which may influence the future directions of NCI-sponsored research. Citation Format: Michelle A. Berny-Lang, Emily J. Greenspan. NCI's Provocative Questions Initiative. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 3500. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-3500