Cancer’s leading thinkers. Together in one room.
FORBECK FORUMS WORK! THE ULT
EDWARD STITES, MD, PHD • YALE UNIVERSITY
FORBECK FORUMS ACT AS AN ACCELERATOR IN THE RESEARCH PROCESS. The doctors and scientists who attend Forbeck Forums are predominantly working within research labs supported by millions of dollars in funding and staffed by senior scientists, post-doctoral fellows, trainees and research assistants. Their goal is to discover new facts that ultimately could lead to new therapies that can help in the drive to cure cancer.
The road to developing a new treatment for any cancer involves the following:
1. 2. 3.
Developing a new idea that can be tested in the laboratory
Testing the hypothesis in the laboratory
Publishing the data in the scientific and clinical press
4. If applicable begin the extensive testing required to the clinic through a number of studies, designated Phase I, Phase II and Phase III.
No one of these steps is more important than the other. The Forbeck Foundation is focused upon the development of new concepts for testing in the laboratory. I am sure that many of you have heard about Newton developing the theory of gravity by having an apple fall on him whilst sitting under a tree, but in reality, developing ideas in isolation is a rare event. The most efficient way of doing this is to bring together scientists working in closely related fields so that they can discuss concepts
from different perspectives. This is precisely what the Forbeck Foundation set out to do and it is why scientists and clinicians take time out of their busy schedules to attend a Forbeck Forum. The question we are often asked is how can we quantify the generation of new ideas? We need to do this validate the work we set out to achieve. We have always had positive reviews from our participants and the growth in participation and request for our meetings is one proof of success. However, recently, we have found other quantifiable statistics of our success – an increase in both publications in the scientific press and the number NIH grants obtained. Edward Stites, MD, PhD at Yale University and Deep Patel, a Yale student working toward a Master’s Degree in Computational Biology and
Bioinformatics, analyzed data from the NIH database of scientific and peer-reviewed publications.
They determined whether there was an increase in publications amongst those attending a Forum over the period of our existence. Figure I shows that the average number of publications significantly increased on a year by year basis and this increase was sustained over the five years following the meeting ( Figure 1). Remember that each research paper contributes to our knowledge of the disease and builds upon the overall goal of curing any one of the many forms of the disease. Considering that research funding can take multiple years to acquire and the research itself may take many years to complete and publish, the data suggests that the long-term publication output of the Foundation will continue to increase.
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