Abstract

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) considers its principal mission for three modalities: (1) the integration of discovery activities with collaborations of interdisciplinary types; (2) the acceleration of innovations and provision of technology that will allow achievements of translational research; and (3) to move the aforementioned new discoveries via translational methods for application in clinics and public health programs. This article will focus on the contemporary trends for 2003-2004 and the NIH budget of 2005 to enumerate the progress in surgical funding by the NIH and NCI. Specifically, this presentation focuses on outcomes in departments of surgery nationally with correlates for non-surgical clinical sciences and their funding. While the NCI and NIH continue to undergo a comprehensive scrutiny of their resources in this budget-reduced environment related to the efforts to secure peace in Iraq, it is highly probable that our current mechanisms in place will not change without participation of surgical scientists in oncology in the award mechanisms. It should be highly encouraged that surgeon-scientists actively participate on Study Sections of the NIH-NCI to provide surgical investigators the opportunity to be competitive with non-surgeons when reviews of meritorious proposals are submitted by their surgical oncology peers.

(c) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.