The “Cancer Moonshot” initiative was announced by U.S. President Barack Obama at his State of the Union address in January.
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Keeping that in mind, Biden announced several new actions that support the goals of the Moonshot, with the White House later releasing a statement with the details of more than 30 other initiatives. It’s being called the Cancer Moonshot Summit.
San Diego cancer researchers, patients and biotech leaders gathered at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla Wednesday to hear Biden speak from Washington, D.C. They also discussed local contributions toward the White House’s goal of “ending cancer as we know it”. The Summit will be held on Wednesday, June 29, at Howard University, in Washington, DC.
A corporate-government partnership to improve US veterans’ access to personalized cancer treatments will highlight a nationwide series of gatherings and events Wednesday detailing of Vice President Joe Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot” program.
“Forty-five years ago when Nixon declared the war on cancer we had chemotherapy and we had radiation therapy”, said Agus, a professor of medicine and engineering and the head of USC’s Westside Cancer Center.
The University of California, the Athena Breast Health Network, Quantum Leap Healthcare Collaborative and Salesforce said they would develop a new care model that, according to Biden’s office, “evolves the point of care into a patient-centric data hub”. Biden had hoped to dramatically boost government activity on cancer, but his campaign has run up against political and logistical obstacles.
“I actually felt empowered”, said Mohammed Milhem, deputy director for UI Clinical Cancer Services.
With a bold vision to double our commitment, BCRF aims to accelerate the path from discovery to clinical implementation-improving treatment options for patients faster.
There’s no mechanism in place to enforce the mandate that trial results be quickly posted to www.clinicaltrials.gov, where patients and their doctors can identify treatments that have been effective for other patients.
But cancer researchers and institutions claim they already share large amounts of data and often work together and with the government, and also say government rules make it hard to develop treatments quickly and get them approved for patients, the AP reported.
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IBM’s “Watson” will help researches conduct genomic analyses on 10,000 veterans with cancer over the next two years.
