"I give you my word as a Biden: This Cancer Moonshot is one of the reasons why I ran for President," said President Joe Biden during a major address on Sept. 12 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Speaking on the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy's call for Americans to land on the moon, Biden delivered a detailed address on his vision for conquering cancer, comparing the boldness needed for the Cancer Moonshot to that required to put a man on the moon.
As previously reported by Oncology Times in February 2022, Biden announced he was supercharging the Cancer Moonshot initiative that he was first named to lead as Vice President by President Barack Obama. In February, Biden said the jumpstarted Cancer Moonshot, which was initially launched by the 21st Century Cures Act, aims to reduce the U.S. death rate due to cancer by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years; turn more cancers from death sentences into chronic diseases; provide more support to cancer patients and their families; and update the fight against cancer through research.
"As part of the supercharged Moonshot, I'll use my authority as President to increase funding to break logjams and to speed breakthroughs. Beating cancer is something we can do together," added Biden, who lost his adult son Beau Biden to brain cancer. "We've made enormous progress in the past 50 years since President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act to declare a war on cancer. But we still lack strategies for developing treatments for some cancers, like childhood cancers. We don't do enough to help patients and families navigate the cancer care system."
Biden announced that he was establishing the "first-ever Cancer Moonshot Scholars program to support a new generation of scientists from every background, from every part of the country, to launch their cutting-edge research and careers."
Advancing Initiatives
In addition, Biden announced progress on the following initiatives.
* Naming the inaugural director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), Renee Wegrzyn, PhD, an entrepreneur in synthetic biology who was most recently Vice President for Business Development at Ginkgo Bioworks, a platform for cell programming. As previously reported by Oncology Times, ARPA-H, modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), will undertake risky research with a potentially high payoff. Wegryzyn led multiple biotechnology projects at DARPA.
"ARPA-H will have the singular purpose to drive breakthroughs to prevent, detect, and treat diseases-including cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and other diseases-and enable us to lead healthier lives," said Biden. The agency has been launched with an initial $1 billion in funding from Congress.
"I predict ARPA-H will emerge as a new and exciting member of America's biomedical ecosystem," said Biden. "Imagine a simple blood test during an annual physical that could detect cancer early, where the chances of a cure are best." He also cited the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines, envisioning that research might lead to using it "to stop cancer cells when they first arise."
* Signing an Executive Order to launch a National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative to ensure the United States makes cutting-edge innovations at home. The President said the U.S. has for too long relied on foreign materials and offshored critical industries, a reliance which presents a threat to the U.S. ability to gain access to key materials, including the active pharmaceutical ingredients for life-saving medications.
"We need to manufacture advanced biotechnologies here in the United States," he said, also noting that this initiative will save lives, create jobs at home, build stronger supply chains, and ensure lower prices for American families even when there is unrest around the globe. This initiative will increase the strength of the domestic biomanufacturing capacity, expand market opportunities for bio-based products through federal programs, drive research and development across relevant U.S. agencies, streamline and harmonize regulations, and make it a priority to invest in applied biosafety research in biosecurity to reduce risk. On Sept. 14, the White House hosted a Summit on Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing, at which specifics of this initiative were discussed.
In July 2022, the President announced that the revitalized Cancer Moonshot had formed a Cancer Cabinet that will unite government agencies (not just those in health) and mobilize all levels of the federal government. That cabinet announced that its priorities would be to: 1) close the gap in cancer screening; 2) understand and address environmental exposure; 3) decrease the impact of preventable cancers; 4) bring cutting-edge research to patients and communities; and 5) support patients and their caregivers. Among its efforts at progress toward attaining these goals, the Cancer Cabinet is announcing the following actions.
* Launching a pioneering national study on multi-cancer detection at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which has a new director, Monica Bertagnolli, MD, a surgical oncologist previously from Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center and Brigham and Women's Hospital. This research will seek to identify effective blood tests for the detection of one or more cancers, thus paving the way for less-invasive early diagnosis. Initially, a 4-year pilot study will enroll 24,000 participants ages 45-70. This study will lay the groundwork for a large randomized controlled trial that will enroll 225,000 subjects, beginning in 2024. The research will be supported in part by money from the 21st Century Cures Act Cancer Moonshot funds. As previously reported by Oncology Times, a bill introduced in Congress, the Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act, would authorize the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to evaluate and cover these blood-based multi-cancer screening tests if they have been approved by the FDA.
* Establishing Telehealth Research Centers of Excellence (TRACE) at the NCI. The organization has allocated $23 million to support the creation of TRACE, which will study the role of telehealth in cancer prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, survivorship, and equity in access and outcomes. Some 400 funded research centers will conduct large trials in real-world clinical settings, such as hospitals and primary care offices, to determine whether telehealth-a tool which was widely used during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic-is able to deliver high-quality cancer care. The results of this research will be used to identify best practices for cancer telehealth that will benefit cancer patients.
* Expanding partnerships at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to deliver new cancer technologies. NIST and the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals recently awarded funding to two project teams to create new partnerships for workforce training in cell- and gene-therapy manufacturing to ensure cellular therapies for cancer can be more efficiently and consistently manufactured. In addition, NIST and the Medical Device Innovation Consortium signed a cooperative agreement to develop and manufacture DNA reference samples engineered to contain mutations commonly tested for diagnosing and targeting drugs for cancer.
* Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. This legislation lowers prescription drug expenses for cancer patients, capping out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries at $2,000 per year.
* Creation of a Department of Defense (DoD) research program to understand military toxic exposure. PROMETHEUS (the Project for Military Exposures and Toxin History Evaluation in U.S. service members), a project of DoD's Murtha Cancer Center Research Program, will bring together agency and private sector scientists to study and better understand cancer in members of the armed forces exposed to toxic substances. This project will make use of DoD's Serum Repository, which contains blood samples for all service members; the Individual Longitudinal Exposure Record, which tracks toxin exposures; the DoD Tumor Registry, which tracks cancer diagnoses in active duty members; and other DoD resources.
In closing his speech, President Biden invited members of the audience to participate in the fight against cancer and share their ideas, stories, and actions by clicking on http://WhiteHouse.gov/CancerMoonshot.
Peggy Eastman is a contributing writer.