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Abstract UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center (LCCC) has a robust and growing cancer patient advocacy community. UNC Lineberger is the flagship publicly funded comprehensive cancer center in North Carolina. We are constantly looking for ways to educate patient and community advocates on recent advances in cancer biology research and clinical trials. Our advocates are also valuable partners for our basic and clinical researchers that may be early in their career. We developed and implemented an inaugural research education program for new advocates. We model this program partly on the highly successful and popular AACR Scientist Survivor Program that recently celebrated it’s 25th anniversary. Some of the UNC LCCC advocates participate in the SSP and were motivated to develop our own local program. We will showcase our pilot 2024 ASPIRE education program that brings together cancer patient and community advocates and cancer researchers to learn from each other. The basic itinerary of the ASPIRE program is: 1. Three separate one-hour online presentations by UNC Lineberger researchers with a patient advocate moderator. The topics covered are: Cancer 101: cancer biology, diagnosis, staging, treatment. Clinical Trials 101: clinical trials, phases, patient protection, progress with for example accrual of representative populations. Research 101: bench research, bioinformatic, AI, how research works and how it may lead to new treatments. To showcase a tissue donation program being developed by UNC Patient Advocates that will benefit researchers. 2. The lecture series is followed by a breakfast roundtable discussion for all the participants to discuss their experiences. There will be short presentations and discussions in small groups of researchers and cancer patient advocates. We will summarize our ASPIRE pilot experience, how our participation in the SSP program motivated this local program, and how we plan to incorporate feedback from participants to inform future programs. We hope this will lead to more informed patient advocates that can then be even more powerful in research advocacy. Citation Format: Laurie Betts, Jennifer Potter, Veronica Carlisle, Patricia A. Spears. ASPIRE: Advocates and Scientists Partner in Research Education abstract. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts) ; 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84 (6Suppl): Abstract nr 1291.
Betts et al. (Fri,) studied this question.