The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) in association with the National Cancer Institute (NCI), US is co-sponsoring a series of Provocative Questions workshops on Cancer Biology, in India.  The event, which has already started from October 27-29 in Delhi, will be held from October 30-November 1 in Bengaluru and November 3-5 in Trivandrum.

These workshops will include a select international delegation of cancer researchers along with scientists from India who will try to identify questions that highlight important areas of cancer research that are understudied or forgotten. The best of these questions are presented to the research community as part of a Request for Applications (RFA) in which scientists can apply for funding to answer some facet of the Provocative Question.

The Indian workshops' activities will seek to develop a set of questions from which one or more RFAs jointly sponsored by NCI and DBT may emerge. To stimulate wider participation in the Provocative Questions Initiative (PQI), the scientific community was invited to pose questions on understanding of cancer and cancer control,  address broad issues in biology of cancer that have proven difficult to resolve, take into consideration the likelihood of progress in the foreseeable future (e.g. 5 to 10 years), and address ways to overcome obstacles to achieving long-term goals.

The even is significant as despite several specific advances in understanding of different cancers and cancer control, a multi-pronged plan of action is required to address broader issues in biology of cancer that have proven difficult to resolve and address ways to overcome obstacles to achieving long-term goals. Indian scientific community has been researching on cancer for the last two decades with good publication and relevant scientific pool. It’s time to identify the PQ related to India-specific cancers using processes that are scientifically more challenging all over the globe.

The collaborative process of formulating the provocative questions in cancer has been experimented upon by the NCI- NIH; it resulted into identifying many crucial questions that resulted into invited research proposals. It is now aimed to engage the NCI’s scientific community in serious debate with Indian cancer researchers and energise them and other constituencies (advocacy groups, health professionals, Members of Congress, and others) about the prospects for improving the welfare of cancer patients through research.