Cancer Moonshot Requires Funding Infusion

While progress has been made, challenges remain in the goal to advance cancer research, according to the Cancer Moonshot report Vice President Joe Biden delivered to the White House on Monday. The “Cancer Moonshot” is the current administration’s effort to accelerate 10 years’ worth of progress in cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment into just five. The Washington Post detailed remaining challenges, including a lack of coordination among researchers, outdated funding cultures and slow dissemination of information regarding new treatments. The White House has urged Congress to approve $1 billion in funding for the effort, along with money for other health initiatives and the National Institutes of Health.

Biden, who lost his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015 and who heads the moonshot initiative, said he will dedicate the rest of his life to the effort. He will, however, be appealing to a lame-duck Congress and while Hillary Clinton has indicated she would continue the effort if elected, Donald Trump has not addressed the issue. But Biden, in his address at the White House, called cancer research “the last bastion of genuine, true bipartisanship.”

A taskforce, convened after a call by President Barack Obama in his last State of the Union address, identified five goals to accelerate cancer research and noted that “any new pursuit must serve a bold purpose.” With year one already underway, the task force called for strategies in the remaining four years of the five-year campaign such as creating a shared resource of a linked clinical dataset, strengthening interactions among agencies and engaging additional partners in support of multidisciplinary cancer research, and building collaborative relationships with the private sector and academia.

A Blue Ribbon Panel, convened as a part of the initiative to recommend areas of scientific opportunity to complement the task force’s activities, listed 10 research recommendations for achieving the Cancer Moonshot’s goals, including the creation of a data ecosystem for sharing and analysis, and development of new, enabling cancer technologies to characterize tumors and test therapies.

Throughout all of the task force’s actions and recommendations, the following principles were identified in the report:

• Drive innovation in the current cancer ecosystem by pursuing audacious, creative, and disruptive approaches;
• Collaborate across disciplines, sectors, and borders to leverage talent and expertise; and,
• Share information rapidly to drive advances and crowdsource solutions.  

The Wall Street Journal has reported that new funding for the NIH, the research campaign and a precision-medicine project may only be half to two-thirds of the desired amount over five years that the House last year designated for the projects. But some top Republicans, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, have said they would push for legislation for new funding, as well as money for the NIH and other agencies.