Areas of Focus

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Areas of Focus

(Click to download the Cancer Nanotechnology Brochure)

On the basis of discussions with a wide range of clinicians, cancer researchers, and technologists, it is clear that nanotechnology is ready today to solve mission-critical problems in cancer research. Indeed, one of the goals of the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer is to increase the visibility and availability of nanomaterials and nanoscale devices technology within the cancer research and development community to allow investigators the opportunity to do what they do best-discover and invent using new tools, just as they are doing with other disruptive technologies such as DNA microarrays and proteomic analysis.

But the NCI's major goal in implementing the components of the Alliance is to catalyze targeted discovery and development efforts that offer the greatest opportunity for advances in the near and medium terms and to lower the barriers for those advances to be handed off to the private sector for commercial development. The Alliance focuses on translational research and development work in the following six major challenge areas, where nanotechnology can have the biggest and fastest impact.