Inspiring a New Generation to Defy the Bounds of Innovation: A Moonshot to Cure Cancer. 
 
 Three months ago, I called for a “moonshot” to cure cancer. 
 
 Tonight, the President tasked me with leading a new, national mission to get this done. 
 
 It’s personal for me. But it’s also personal for nearly every American, and millions of people around the world. We all know someone who has had cancer, or is fighting to beat it. They’re our family, friends, and co-workers. 
 
 Today, cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide. And that’s only expected to increase in the coming decades — unless we make more progress today. 
 
 I know we can. 
 
 From my own personal experience, I’ve learned that research and therapies are on the cusp of incredible breakthroughs. Just in the past four years, we’ve seen amazing advancements. And this is an inflection point. 
 
 Over the course of the past few months, I’ve met with nearly 200 of the world’s top cancer physicians, researchers, and philanthropists. 
 
 And the goal of this initiative — this “Moonshot” — is to seize this moment. To accelerate our efforts to progress towards a cure, and to unleash new discoveries and breakthroughs for other deadly diseases. ||||| A billionaire entrepreneur has pulled together a coalition of drugmakers to speed development of what researchers believe could be a powerful weapon against cancers -- potent combinations of new drugs that harness the body’s immune system. 
 
 So-called immunotherapies help disease-fighting cells attack tumors. Yet researchers believe they may work best when two, three or more of the drugs are used together -- overwhelming a tumor’s cellular defenses with attacks from all sides. 
 
 The group brought together by Patrick Soon-Shiong calls itself Moonshot 2020 and also includes academic institutions and insurers. Its leaders hope to get competing drug and biotech companies to work together on the combination treatments rather than developing their own compounds in isolation. 
 
 “The key contribution here is the ability to run combination studies with drugs from multiple pharma companies in a rapid manner,” said Manuel Hidalgo, clinical director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “Combination studies with unapproved drugs from different pharma companies are not easy to do, and we want to be able combine three to four drugs, not just two." 
 
 While the immunotherapies have side effects of their own, physicians have hoped they can be better tailored to a patient’s tumor profile, and someday replace or supplement chemotherapy, which is thought of as a blunt tool with high toxicity. 
 
 The group aims to complete clinical trials for up to 20 tumor types in as many as 20,000 patients by the year 2020, according to a statement issued at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. Participating drugmakers include Amgen Inc., Celgene Corp., GlaxoSmithKline Plc and NantWorks LLC, as well as health insurer Independence Blue Cross and Bank of America Corp., which is self-insured, according to the statement. 
 
 Biden Meeting 
 
 Members of the coalition met with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, who said in a November speech that a “moonshot" was needed to cure cancer. Biden’s speech came after meeting with Soon-Shiong, the billionaire said. The coalition hasn’t asked the Obama administration for financial support, according to NantWorks. 
 
 All 20,000 patients will have their tumors genetically sequenced, and the plan is to create a patient registry where drugmakers can search for specific patients that fit the criteria for their trials, said Soon-Shiong, chief executive officer of NantWorks. Soon-Shiong became a billionaire through drug companies he started and sold, APP Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Abraxis BioScience Inc. 
 
 “People in large pharma now realize they can’t go it alone," Soon-Shiong said in an interview. The coalition is in very early stages and hadn’t determined yet how much each participant might contribute financially and how the group would collectively maintain a database of patients, he said. 
 
 Independence Blue Cross will cover patient costs related to trials for its members, and will also cover genomic sequencing performed by Soon-Shiong’s company NantHealth, according to spokeswoman Elizabeth Sell. The Philadelphia-based health insurer covers 10 million people in 34 states and Washington, D.C., according to its website. ||||| 
 
 
 
 President Barack Obama tasked Vice President Joe Biden with curing cancer during Tuesday’s State of the Union—much to Biden’s apparent surprise. 
 
 Obama announced a new national cancer initiative, fronted by the Vice President. “Tonight, I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done. And because he’s gone to the mat for all of us, on so many issues over the past forty years, I’m putting Joe in charge of Mission Control,” Obama said. “For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the family we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all.” 
 
 This was much to the surprise of Biden, who reacted quickly, mouthing to House Speaker Paul Ryan that the initiative was “news to me.” 
 
 The Vice President’s office was not surprised though, as they quickly posted a briefing on Biden’s “moonshot” to cure cancer on the blogging platform Medium. His son, Joseph “Beau” Biden passed away to brain cancer last May, which inspired his father to take on the issue. Through the initiative, Biden will says he will work with private industry, government, doctors, patients and more to “target investment, coordinate across silos and increase access to information for everyone in the cancer community. 
 
 “I know that we can help solidify a genuine global commitment to end cancer as we know it today—and inspire a new generation of scientists to pursue new discoveries and the bounds of human endeavor,” Biden wrote on Medium. ||||| Vice President Joe Biden announced today that he won’t be running for president in 2016 but vowed to spend his last 15 months in office working to “silence this deadly disease.” 
 
 Biden also resurrected the “Moonshot” analogy first used by M.D. Anderson to describe its vast initiative to cure cancer: 
 
 “And I believe that we need a moon shot in this country to cure cancer. It’s personal. But I know we can do this. The president and I have already been working hard on increasing funding for research and development, because there are so many breakthroughs just on the horizon in science and medicine, the things that are just about to happen. And we can make them real with an absolute national commitment to end cancer, as we know it today.” 
 
 He added that “If I could be anything, I’d have wanted to be the president who ended cancer. Because I believe it’s possible.” 
 
 On several occasions here at HealthNewsReview.org we’ve issued cautions about making such flamboyant, unsubstantiated promises when talking about cancer cures. The president of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center made a similar claim earlier this year. Steve Miles, MD, offered a caution then that applies to Biden’s claim as well. Making these types of claims “exploits fear, generates marketing stampedes that run roughshod over deliberate research and somehow manages to draw money into those who claim to not be in it for the money.” Miles is professor of Medicine and Bioethics at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics. 
 
 We hope health and political reporters don’t pile on with hype as they did when M.D. Anderson announced its cancer “Moonshot.” 
 
 Kathlyn Stone is an associate editor with HealthNewsReview.org. ||||| CLOSE President Obama announced a new national effort to cure cancer and asked Vice President Joe Biden to lead the charge. Biden's son, Beau, died from brain cancer in May 2015. VPC 
 
 Vice President Biden, with President Obama at his side, in the Rose Garden of the White House on Oct. 21, 2015. (Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo, European Pressphoto Agency) 
 
 WASHINGTON — President Obama announced during his State of the Union Address that he’s putting Vice President Biden in charge of carrying out the “moonshot” to cure cancer that Biden called for following his son’s death. 
 
 
 
 "Last month, (Biden) worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources they’ve had in over a decade," Obama said. "Tonight, I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done. And because he’s gone to the mat for all of us, on so many issues over the past forty years, I’m putting Joe in charge of Mission Control. For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the family we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all." 
 
 Biden, in announcing his decision to not run for president in October, said the country needs “a moonshot” to cure cancer and vowed to spend his next 15 months in office fighting for increased funding for research and development. He said the issue is “personal” to him after the loss of his 46-year-old son, Beau, Delaware’s former attorney general, to brain cancer on May 30. 
 
 In a post Tuesday night on his Medium channel, Biden wrote that cancer research and therapies are “on the cusp of incredible breakthroughs” but science, data and research results are “trapped in silos, preventing faster progress and greater reach to patients.” 
 
 He wrote that he plans to increase public and private resources to fight cancer and break down “silos” to help cancer fighters share information and work together. Later this month he will chair the first of several meetings with cabinet secretaries and heads of relevant agencies to discuss ways to boost funding for cancer research and treatment. 
 
 “The goal of this initiative is simple — to double the rate of progress,” he wrote in the post that appeared during Obama’s address. “To make a decade worth of advances in five years.” 
 
 Biden and his staff have participated in dozens of listening sessions over the last few months to learn about the current state of cancer research and treatment and potential opportunities to advance the pace of progress, according to his office. 
 
 His staff met on Friday with a panel of 15 cancer researchers and physician-scientists, convened by the American Association for Cancer Research, to discuss the potential in areas such as precision medicine and immunotherapy. 
 
 “There’s no question they are in the process of compiling information, talking to the broader cancer research community, so they can get a broad spectrum of ideas,” said Jon Retzlaff, AACR’s policy director. 
 
 Retzlaff credited lobbying by Biden and other congressional leaders with helping secure a $2-billion increase for NIH in this year’s spending legislation, the most significant increase in NIH funding in a dozen years. The National Cancer Institute, which is part of NIH and the federal government's principal agency for cancer research and training, saw more than a 5% funding boost, he said. 
 
 “He was calling on people at the very end to get the omnibus (spending bill) passed,” Retzlaff said. “He’s been a tremendous supporter of medical research throughout his tenure as Vice President, as well as during his time in Congress.” 
 
 The House passed "21st Century Cures" legislation in July that includes provisions designed to foster collaborative research and data-sharing. Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Biden is committed to helping get "important, bipartisan reforms through the Senate and into law" after the two spoke before Obama's address. 
 
 “The talk of a ‘moon shot’ is the exact mindset we need - America can and should lead the way,” Upton said in a statement following Obama's address. “We welcome every voice, including the president’s and vice president’s to the conversation, as we work to get 21st Century Cures across the finish line. The clock is ticking for every family facing an incurable disease.” 
 
 White House spokesman Josh Earnest said during a Tuesday briefing with regional reporters that there is bipartisan interest in investments in medical innovation and research and development. Republican interest in the economic and scientific benefits of investments in medical breakthroughs is “clearly consistent with the kind of a ‘moon shot’ that the vice president has talked about,” Earnest said. 
 
 “I would add that to the list of things that we’re hopeful we can make some progress with Congress on this year,” he said. 
 
 Biden has met over the past few months with nearly 200 of the world’s top cancer physicians, researchers and philanthropists. 
 
 On Friday, he heads to the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine to talk to their physicians and researchers. He meets next week with international experts at the National Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 
 
 “This is our moonshot,” Biden wrote in the Medium post. “I know that we can help solidify a genuine global commitment to end cancer as we know it today — and inspire a new generation of scientists to pursue new discoveries and the bounds of human endeavor. 
 
 Contributing: Gregory Korte, USA TODAY 
 
 Follow @ngaudiano on Twitter. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1RkQa8w ||||| Vice President Joe Biden could use some advice on his "moonshot" to improve the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. 
 
 Vice President Joe Biden unveiled his “moonshot” initiative against cancer Tuesday following a shout-out from President Obama during the State of the Union address. Biden said it’s time to “accelerate our efforts to progress towards a cure, and to unleash new discoveries and breakthroughs for other deadly diseases.” 
 
 Biden’s aides have already held a series of closed-door meetings with cancer researchers. 
 
 Read more: Biden lays out road map for his ‘moonshot’ against cancer 
 
 STAT asked experts inside and outside the cancer world what advice they would offer the vice president to help move his project forward. 
 
 advertisement 
 
 Barrett Rollins: Share data from cancer patients 
 
 Otis Brawley: Use influence even after leaving office 
 
 Gary Gilliland: Make existing potentially curative treatments available to all 
 
 Austin Frakt: Invest in data infrastructure and access 
 
 By Barrett Rollins: I had the honor to be part of the contingent from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) that met last week with Vice President Biden’s staff. We proposed two efforts that could be accomplished in the near term and that could provide substantial advances against cancer. Both revolved around sharing data from cancer patients. 
 
 At Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, DNA from every patient’s tumor undergoes multigene panel testing as part of our Profile project. Using a technology known as next generation sequencing, we check for the presence of mutations in more than 300 genes. Other major cancer centers also use multigene panel testing for many of their patients. The results have uncovered amazing things about cancer, some of which have led to new treatments. 
 
 Presidents have been promising to cure cancer for 45 years, but cancer is still very much with us. Alex Hogan/STAT 
 
 Most of this sequencing is being paid for by philanthropy and institutional dollars. That isn’t sustainable. The time is right for insurers to start paying for it. We recommended that the vice president ask the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to consider reimbursing multigene panel sequencing for cancer. This would vastly increase the number of cancer patients who have their tumors sequenced. 
 
 The AACR got the attention of the vice president’s staff in part because of the association’s Project GENIE. Seven institutions are pooling their clinical sequencing data and all of the clinical data associated with it. Projects analyzing these data are already underway. But the AACR doesn’t have the money or the resources to do this on a national scale. The vice president and his office could influence the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology or other entity to build a repository for sequencing data from all around the country. This would rapidly move the needle in understanding cancer and treating it more effectively. 
 
 Today, detailed genomic information about cancer is available only from comprehensive cancer centers or from individuals who have the money to pay for sequencing their tumors. We need to democratize genomic information as it applies to cancer by expanding the number of cancer patients who have their tumor genes sequenced. The benefits of this kind of testing are already so manifest that it should be made available to everyone with cancer. 
 
 Barrett J. Rollins, MD, is the chief scientific officer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Linde Family Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. 
 
 Otis Brawley: Cancer has been with us for thousands of years. It will not be cured in a year’s time but will take concerted, long-term, sustained effort. That said, there are several things the vice president could do in the short term to improve cancer treatment and survival. 
 
 Gathering and analyzing data about large numbers of cancer patients could provide quick and important advances. The vice president could help overcome privacy laws that do relatively little to protect privacy but a lot to keep researchers from collecting meaningful data. HIPPA and other laws — or incorrect interpretations of them — prevent researchers from sharing genetic and other data. For example, a project called CancerLinQ, organized by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, aims to improve cancer care by gathering data from around the country. But real or perceived privacy issues, along with difficulties connecting disparate electronic health records, may scuttle it. 
 
 Logistic issues and less-than-optimal care account for far too many early deaths from cancer. In Atlanta, 7 percent of black women and 2 percent of white women diagnosed with early, low-stage breast cancer don’t get treated within one year of their diagnoses. The delays, which can affect survival, are often due to problems like inability to get to a treatment center, not being able to take time off of work, and other logistic issues. Twenty percent of women with breast cancer get less-than-optimal treatment; the percentages are even higher for other cancers. 
 
 “Moonshot” may be an appropriate description for the vice president’s initiative. When John F. Kennedy announced he wanted to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, much of the engineering to do that already existed. What was needed was someone to put together all the pieces of the puzzle. Applying the science and discoveries that we already have to the American population could go a long way to preventing deaths from cancer. 
 
 Finally, it would be wonderful to see the vice president continue to be a champion for good science and clinical work after he leaves office. As someone who is liked and respected by both Democrats and Republicans, he has the opportunity and standing to provide American medicine and American science with guidance that is sorely needed. 
 
 Otis Brawley, MD, is the chief medical and scientific officer for the American Cancer Society and professor at Emory University. 
 
 By Gary Gilliland: It’s fantastic that the vice president has decided to launch a concerted effort to fight cancer. The timing is excellent, since we are at an inflection point in the way we think about cancer treatment. 
 
 This is a very different time than when President Nixon declared his war on cancer in 1971. We couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel then. Now we can. 
 
 Four or five years ago, there was little we could do for cancers like metastatic melanoma and metastatic lung cancer. Today, we are telling many patients that we can cure these diseases. This change was brought about largely because we have learned to harness the power of the immune system to attack cancer, just as it attacks foreign invaders like bacteria and viruses. 
 
 Drugs like pembrolizumab (Keytruda) — which was used to treat former President Jimmy Carter’s advanced melanoma — take the brakes off the immune system and let it go after tumors with relatively few side effects. 
 
 When I think about what the vice president could do in a relatively short time to fight cancer, it’s not about tumor sequencing or data sharing. There’s no question that these are really important and will lead to new insights, but they will take some time to pay off. Instead, I think a “moonshot” should aim to make the new, potentially curative therapies available to everyone with cancer, not just to those being treated at designated comprehensive cancer centers. We have these therapies; let’s get them out there. 
 
 With something as potentially devastating as cancer, which affects so many individuals and so many families, you don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver. But I truly believe that we have the opportunity to move forward quickly and have a more dramatic impact on cancer outcomes in the next few years than we have had in the last 50. 
 
 Gary Gilliland, MD, is the president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. 
 
 By Austin Frakt: I would urge the vice president to invest in data infrastructure and access. 
 
 Researchers spend a shockingly large amount of time accessing, or trying to access, data they need to do their work. It can take many steps to obtain clinical or administrative data, sometimes even data that has been collected specifically for researchers to use. Having to take many steps to access data, or having to overcome barriers to do it, slows research. Beefing up data availability and data infrastructure and removing regulatory and other obstacles would speed up research. Because they would accelerate a wide range of work, these are useful steps even when specific research areas haven’t yet been defined. They would give researchers and research organizations more time to efficiently and effectively do actual research instead of dealing with red tape. 
 
 Some red tape provides important functions. For example, it’s essential that clinical trial or administrative data be handled carefully, especially when it contains personal information. But the requirements often go too far and the hurdles can take too long to clear, bringing research to a crawl. 
 
 For example, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently began removing from the data they provide to researchers all records for patients with substance use disorder diagnoses. This makes it difficult to study the opioid crisis, the spread and treatment of hepatitis C (which disproportionately affects substance users), and a wide range of mental health care. This new barrier to data, which had been previously available, has derailed productive researchers who now must figure out new ways to conduct their work. 
 
 In my world, such data infrastructure issues are common. I’d be surprised if they aren’t just as common in cancer research as well. 
 
 Austin Frakt, PhD (@afrakt), is a health economist in the US Department of Veteran Affairs and associate professor at Boston University’s School of Medicine and School of Public Health. He is also an editor-in-chief of The Incidental Economist. 
 
 This story has been updated to include comments from Gary Gilliland.
– President Obama put Joe Biden in charge of a national "moonshot" to cure cancer during Tuesday night's State of the Union address. Some related reading: Given the myriad cancers out there, it won't be one giant moonshot so much as many smaller moonshots, reports the Washington Post. One tangible idea: creation of a massive national database of all cancer patients and their treatments. Gathering that kind of data might require Biden to use his clout to overcome well-meaning privacy laws such as HIPAA, one expert tells STAT. Biden himself explains the "personal" mission in a post at Medium. "The science is ready." But during the State of the Union, he seemed surprised at Obama's announcement, notes Time. One buzzword is "immunotherapies," and a billionaire entrepreneur has created a coalition of drug and biotech companies to work on combination treatments rather than focusing on single drugs, reports Bloomberg. The group is called Moonshot 2020 and has met with Biden. The VP has been working on this for about three months now, and USA Today has an overview of the progress (lots of "listening sessions" so far, but also increased funding for the NIH). Health News Review hates the term "moonshot" because of the "flamboyant, unsubstantiated promises" it fosters.