It seems that every time I open the newspaper I see truly good news: headlines touting the latest advances in cancer research. Yet, behind the closed doors of the nation's laboratories and clinics, scientists are losing ground as federal funding for cancer research continues to decline.

Walking the halls of academia, I see cancer researchers spending less time discussing the future of research and more time struggling with obtaining needed funding for their research, and even questioning if and how they will survive as scientists.

Just four years ago, scientists were reaping the benefits of a robust National Institutes of Health budget that doubled from 1998 to 2003. With the promise of funding and the motivation to conquer cancer -- a disease diagnosed in more than 2 million Americans each year -- many young scientists eagerly entered this field of research.

But now the purse strings are drawn so tight that we're strangling. The proposed 2008 appropriations bill for labor, health and human services, and education fails to match inflation, let alone support new cancer research.

Researchers have hit a wall. As director of a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center at the University of Pittsburgh, it's unsettling to witness the impact.

Even very accomplished scientists who have shaped the direction of cancer discovery now are becoming increasingly disheartened. Dr. Shiyuan Cheng, a basic cancer researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, has spent more than five years trying to stop breast cancer before its deadly spread throughout the body. Just as Dr. Cheng located what he believed to be key molecules that mediate breast-cancer metastasis, his funding ran out. After several unsuccessful attempts to convince the NIH to fund his work, this important study has been placed indefinitely on hold.

Dr. Cheng is not alone. Rather than advancing research to improve chemotherapy, the scientists in the lab of UPCI pharmacologist Dr. Lin Zhang now spend more than half of their time writing grants to receive funding. Even when they're successful, grants fall substantially short of the lab's requests, making it nearly impossible to meet all of its research objectives. If this bleak pattern continues, Dr. Zhang is considering leaving the United States to conduct his research in China where the funding picture is brighter.

America, once the country of choice for training among the best and brightest foreign researchers, is on the brink of losing its competitive edge in cancer research. International scientists, realizing the dire funding situation in the United States, are relocating to countries more willing to properly fund cancer research. Another colleague, Dr. John Lazo, a professor of pharmacology at UPCI, lost two postdoctoral fellows in as many months. These bright young scientists left his lab to return to their home countries in search of adequate funding.

Junior researchers and graduate students, drawn to cancer research during the years of robust funding growth and rapid research advances, now face tough decisions about continuing in a field that's become a frustrating uphill funding battle. The opportunities to use their years of scientific training are dwindling, forcing young scientists at UPCI to trickle away from academia and start fresh with new careers.

Talented and innovative cancer scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and across America want nothing less than a cure for cancer. They've devoted lives and careers to the quest. But the funding crisis has replaced the spark of ingenuity with doubt and fear for the future.

We have come further than I could have imagined when I entered the field of cancer research more than 40 years ago. Today we are creating customized cancer treatments based on an individual's unique genetic makeup and developing vaccines that can train the immune system to fight cancer before it can take hold.

Now is not the time to abandon progress. Now is the time to increase federal funding for cancer research to ensure that these breakthroughs, and the promising minds behind them, do not go to waste.

The power to conquer cancer is within our reach, but Congress must provide us with the tools to continue to move forward, by increasing funding for the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute. Failure to do so will prove devastating to the future of science, and to the quite realistic hopes for a future without cancer.