Cancer Moonshot program is "close to gigantic progress", Joe Biden says

Vice-president Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative to speed the development of cancer treatments has made some important strides such as increased information-sharing among researchers but still faces challenges in many areas, according to a report on Monday.

The White House is still seeking about $ 700m from Congress for the project. With Barack Obama leaving office in January, it is also unclear how much of the initiative will continue under a new administration.

Microsoft and Amazon have committed to creating cloud storage for the effort, according to the report, which summarizes the work completed so far and outlines a path forward over the next five years.

Ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft will help patients get to the doctor and to clinical trials.

“I’m going to devote the rest of my life to working on this, and I think we’re perilously close to making some gigantic progress,” Biden told reporters.

The $ 1bn moonshot project was announced by Obama during his State of the Union address in January. Since then, Biden, whose son Beau died last year at age 46 from brain cancer, has announced multiple investments and collaborations in support of the project.

The Cancer Moonshot initiative has also spurred the defense department to use artificial intelligence to analyze its collection of tissue from tumors to look for patterns.

The US Patent and Trademark Office has launched a pilot program to cut in half the time to review certain cancer therapy patent applications from an average of about two years to less than 12 months.

Obama praised Biden for his leadership on the issue and said his administration was laying the groundwork for future presidents to continue the fight against cancer.

“While we are going to be leaving soon, what I think we are going to be able to leave behind is an architecture and a framework” for advancing cancer research, Obama told reporters after his meeting with Biden.

Cancer Moonshot program is "close to gigantic progress", Joe Biden says

"Moonshot" cancer panel calls for US to create national research database

Top US cancer scientists have urged the Obama administration to create a national cancer database for clinicians and patients as part of a slew of recommendations presented on Wednesday by the White House-supported cancer “moonshot” panel.

Vice-president Joe Biden assembled the scientists as part of the administration’s effort to make the US the country that cures cancer “once and for all”.

The Cancer Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel report said the recommendations, if implemented, “will transform our understanding of cancer and result in new opportunities to more effectively prevent and treat the disease”.

The ten recommendations include existing programs that need more funding – such as research to update guidelines for patient symptom control – and brand new initiatives including a human tumor database to monitor and analyze multi-dimensional cell behavior.

The panel also called for the creation of a network of databases for patients to profile their cancers and pre-register for clinical trials; the organization of a cancer immunotherapy clinical trial network; and the study and development of therapies that prevent or overcome drug resistance.

The panel also recommended initiatives to improve the understanding of a protein tied to pediatric cancers; increase monitoring and management of symptom care and treatment; support development of new testing and treatment technologies; and improve prevention and early detection.

But the funding necessary to fulfill these recommendations has not been approved by Congress despite lobbying by the Obama administration, which said it hoped to spend $ 1bn on the program.

“Congress should seize this historic opportunity – when researchers are on the brink of so many new and potentially life-saving developments in diagnostic tests and treatments – to boost funding for the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and NCI [National Cancer Institute],” said Gary Reedy, CEO of the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the not-for-profit organization’s action network, ACS CAN, in a statement.

The ACS said in January that it expects 1.6m new cancer cases to be diagnosed in 2016, the equivalent of about 4,600 new diagnoses each day.

Barack Obama announced that he had tasked Biden with leading the moonshot program in his final State of the Union address in January. The program aims to accomplish “a decade’s worth of cancer research progress in five years”.

It is a personal effort for Biden, whose son, Joseph “Beau” Biden III, died from brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46. Last year, Biden helped secure a $ 264m increase in federal funding to the National Cancer Institute in the spending bill.

The panel report is a major step in that direction, and will be presented to the National Cancer Advisory Board on Wednesday, where it is expected to be formally accepted.

To determine the recommendations, the country’s top cancer scientists were divided into seven working groups to focus on elements like immunology and clinical trials. More than 1,600 ideas and comments were also submitted by the public.

Along with the recommendations, the panel also listed policy issues that needed to be addressed so that the recommendations could be efficiently implemented, including laws around patient privacy, the clinical trial system and insurance coverage.

Biden and Obama have acknowledged that it is unlikely cancer will be cured in the next five years, but they have said the moonshot program could create unprecedented strides in the fight against the disease.

“The key for us now is to put a lot more money into research,” Obama said in January. “If we do, I think we’re going to see some really big breakthroughs soon.”

"Moonshot" cancer panel calls for US to create national research database