Dear Colleagues:

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) welcomes you to the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer Phase 3 Kick-off Meeting.

The Alliance is entering its eleventh year of operations and third round of funding. The continuation of this program is evidence of the high value NCI and the research community assign to applications of nanotechnology in cancer. Over the last several years, the Alliance relied on the talent of a multidisciplinary research community to develop new solutions in molecular assays, in vivo imaging, and multifunctional therapeutics. Several newly developed technologies are entering clinical trials and beginning to deliver on the promise to benefit patients.

We expect that the next five years will build further on recent discoveries, establish promising new approaches, and aggressively move several nanotechnology based interventions to the clinical environment, while developing further fundamental understanding of nanomaterial and nanodevice interactions with biological systems. We, the extramural investigators and internal NCI program directors, owe the patient community our best efforts in rapidly bringing promising nanotechnologies to them.

We are honored to work with you and look forward to the next five years of the Alliance. We hope that you will enjoy this initial meeting and participation in the entire program.

Best regards,

Office of Cancer Nanotechnology Research, NCI

Piotr Grodzinski, Natalie Abrams, Dorothy Farrell, Christopher Hartshorn, Christina Liu, Stephanie Morris, Nicholas Panaro