Over the next several months, the OBQI team will design a number of initiatives to identify and clinically qualify other cancer biomarkers. The new initiatives will bring together scientists from many sources and address agency priorities identified through FDA's Critical Path and NIH's Roadmap Initiatives. The OBQI also represents the work of the NCI-FDA Interagency Oncology Task Force (IOTF). The IOTF is a collaboration between NCI and FDA to enhance the efficiency of clinical research and the scientific evaluation of new cancer treatments. The two agencies, along with CMS, share knowledge and resources to facilitate the development of new cancer drugs and diagnostics and speed their delivery to patients as safely and as cost-effectively as possible.

FDA Critical Path


Critical Path is the FDA's premier initiative to identify and prioritize the most pressing medical product development problems and the greatest opportunities for rapid improvement in public health benefits. Its primary purpose is to ensure that basic scientific discoveries translate more rapidly into new and better medical treatments by creating new tools to find answers about how the safety and effectiveness of new medical products can be demonstrated in faster timeframes with more certainty and at lower costs.

The NIH Roadmap

The NIH Roadmap is a series of new initiatives designed to pursue major opportunities and gaps in biomedical research that no single NIH institute could tackle alone, but which the agency as a whole can address to make the biggest impact possible on the progress of medical research, and to catalyze changes that will serve to transform new scientific knowledge into tangible benefits for public health. Additional information about the NIH Roadmap can be found at its Web site, www.nihroadmap.nih.gov.

For information about the Food and Drug Administration, please visit http://www.fda.gov.
For additional information about the National Cancer Institute, please visit http://www.cancer.gov.
For information about the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, please visit http://cms.hhs.gov.

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