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How Can We Accelerate NF Research Progress?

Strategic Planning to Set Future Directions

The Children's Tumor Foundation has awarded over $30M in research grants since 1978, supporting innovative new ideas & focusing on bringing early-career scientists into NF research. Our investment has paid off by establishing a community of NF researchers who have successfully secured over $200M in government funding in the past 10 years alone.

However, obstacles still remain along the path to finding & implementing effective drug treatments for NF. What are these obstacles? How can we surmount them?

What must we at the Children's Tumor Foundation, as well as the NF community at-large do next to accelerate progress toward finding effective NF therapies?

In 2006, the Foundation convened a strategic planning meeting to answer these questions.

First we developed the "NF Research Landscape" a review of grant funding for NF research over the past ten years, how it has been spent, and what it has accomplished; and an assessment of where we stood along the path to finding treatments for NF.

The recommendations made during that meeting guided the direction of the Foundation's research programs, and helped inform NF research funding by federal agencies and private funding sources. To read the Strategic Plan outlined in that 2006 meeting, click here.

That meeting charted the course for the next five years of NF research and was revisited when the Foundation hosted a strategic planning meeting in January 2011. Look for announcements in Fall 2011 on how CTF will continue to chart the course of NF research for the next five years!  

In 2006 the NF community had:

-          Few NF specific clinical trials

-          Limited preclinical drug testing  

-          No centralized information on individual NF clinics

-          No national NF tissue bank or patient registry 

-          No or very limited industry interest in NF

In 2011 the NF community has:

-          Nineteen ongoing NF-specific clinical trials

-          An active preclinical ‘pipeline’ in which CTF has entered fifty drugs or combinations

-          NF Clinic Network and increased consensus on aspects of NF clinical care

-          A national NF BioBank and Registry

-          Engaged biotech and pharma – via our preclinical and clinical programs – and by enhancing NF visibility via philanthropic platforms e.g. BIO, FasterCures

In the coming months we will add the Strategic Plan set forth in 2011 for the next five years of NF research -- a period of time in which we expect to see the great advances in NF research, treatment, and care. 

RESEARCH OVERSIGHT: To see how CTF reviews and manages our research programs, CLICK HERE.