Who Needs the LCRP?

Can I get on my soapbox for a minute?

Can I ask you to just hear me out?

Some of you know that I can get myself up on a soapbox when it comes to research funding, and you know that I’m more than a little upset about what is happening in Congress right now over the funding for a specific (LCRP) lung cancer research program. It’s a small program ($14 million), so you might wonder why it should matter. Can I try to put it into some perspective?

Research is done to answer questions, and those questions can range from basic “what if” kinds of questions, to very specific, well defined “how do these two options compare” kinds of questions. And the nature of the question in large part defines where you try to go to get your research funded. So, let’s talk about that.

If you have a kind of abstract idea - say a peptide that looks like it might influence how a drug might be more readily delivered - you may have to show that you’re not just guessing. So you think up a way to test your theory on a small scale in what’s thought of as a proof of concept study. The trial may take a limited amount of time, and you’re only going to show that when you combine X with Y you get a basic result that shows your idea has promise.

Now, a small study like this can be inexpensive ($50K to $100K) if you’re testing stuff together that already exist. But, if you’re doing something that hasn’t been done before, you may need to not only refine a peptide - you may also need to develop a way to deliver it in a concentrated manner, and that may require you to develop a delivery molecule. You may need $500K or more to do that.

The trouble is, there aren’t many sources for that second level of trial. It’s not full bore human subjects study that would qualify for a big grant from NIH or NCI, and it’s too big for the local resource consortiums or the typical non-profit start up grants. And you can’t get it to a more attractive funding level unless you can show that a bigger study is warranted and your basic premise holds water!

In our lung cancer research world, a good and reasonable source of larger proof of concept study efforts has been the Lung Cancer Research Program at CDMRP. It has funded a number of efforts that have gone on to win larger funding through NIH/NCI programs, and it supports a niche research level that might otherwise go unfunded. This is bench science that needs to be done to justify moving into larger, bedside trials, and they are vitally interconnected.

And this stuff comes up at all levels within the continuum. Treatments that worked before are no longer working. Why? Can we treat a mutation if we can deliver a higher concentration of a drug only to the tumor, and how do we do that? We need a test to assess XX levels in a tumor and in surrounding tissue. What might that look like?

These are not huge studies because the questions that need to be answered, at this stage, are not as exacting. But they are questions that, once answered, direct the next set of more precise questions. And they have great potential scientific value.

The CDMRP’s Lung Cancer Research Program funds this level of research. And, if we allow the program to be shut down, we will impact research at all levels by the questions that just won’t get asked and answered. This is research we need to continue.

So, if you’ve noticed that I’m freaking out over the Senate’s exclusion of the Lung Cancer Research Program from their version of the FY2020 Defense Appropriations Bill, this is why. We need this program for so many reasons, but the biggest, to me, is because of the hole its absence would cause.

If you can take a minute to call your senator, please do so. If you can send an email, please do that. If you can visit your rep’s local office, please think of doing that too. The attached Go2 Foundation link will guide you in how you might help. I just wanted to add this note about why you should help.

This is a big deal. Please help if you can.

https://www.votervoice.net/mobile/LCA/Campaigns/68588/Respond?fbclid=IwAR27YsI4J39f5rfD4zeH7qQgp98jGX9KfCqI1zUioQ0uT-5jPdFRrknulL4