NCI Cancer Prevention Fellowship Seeks Passionate Applicants to Drive the Field Forward

Preventing cancer today and in the future lies at the heart of the National Cancer Institute’s competitive postdoctoral fellowship program, which is accepting candidate applications for the 2022 class until August 16, 2021.

The multidisciplinary Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program (CPFP) selects 10 to 15 new fellows each year and provides up to 4 years of support for mentored research and professional development at the NCI. It additionally offers the opportunity for fellows to earn a master’s degree in public health depending on their previous academic training.

CPFP fellows share the conviction “that the best cancer is the one that never happens,” according to Philip Castle, Ph.D., M.P.H., director of NCI’s Division of Cancer Prevention, and an alumnus of the program. Although “how and where they approach that problem differs,” he said, that philosophy and a passion for cancer prevention often fuels their research interests.

In a recent interview with the fellowship’s newsletter, CPFP Chronicles, Dr. Castle credited his own fellowship experience with transforming his scientific career from a focus on laboratory work with the human papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer to HPV epidemiology and its impact on public health. “I took a leap of faith,” he said, “and I never looked back.”

The fellowship also helped him develop the skills necessary to formulate the right research questions for the problems at hand. Not only is this ability vital to all scientific inquiry, it ultimately can distinguish “the great scientists from the average, and the average from the good,” he said.

During its 34-year history, the CPFP has prepared many future leaders in the field of cancer prevention and control, including Dr. Castle, who undertook the division director position at NCI amidst the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Of that privilege, he said, he never envisioned such a role in his “wildest dreams.” However, he tells all new fellows to think about where they want to be in 5 to 10 years and then work back from there. “Make these choices because you love them and then they will love you back,” he advised.

In a series of online testimonials, other former fellows likewise praised the program as transformative in their lives.

Ernest Hawk, M.D., M.P.H., vice president and division head for cancer prevention and population sciences at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, said that his training as a medical oncologist had given him limited exposure to science except as an observer, or as part of an investigative team. Significantly, the fellowship program introduced him to the ideas of cancer chemoprevention and to the leading scientists working in this area of research, he said. This allowed him to take prevention from a conceptual theory into one that played a greater part in clinical practice.

Minal Patel, Ph.D., M.P.H., director at the Truth Initiative, Schroeder Institute, noted that the CPFP allowed her to work with renowned mentors and build on her transdisciplinary training to connect multiple health behaviors related to cancer. She said the CPFP helped to “not only prepare me for the next step in my career, but to propel me to heights greater than I would have achieved through any other postdoctoral training program.”