Shooting for the Moon
Is the Cancer Moonshot a Long Shot?
More than 50 years after President Kennedy
declared the United States’ intent to go to
the moon – “not because [it is] easy, but
because [it is] hard” – President Obama
announced the country’s next target. This
time, the finish line isn’t an unexplored lunar surface; it’s the “elimination of cancer as
we know it,” and reaching this final frontier
will require the same kind of dedication and
innovation needed half a century ago.1
The National Cancer Moonshot Initiative, which President Obama announced
during his State of the Union address
earlier this year, is a $1 billion program
with lofty goals. “The Initiative aims to
bring about a decade’s worth of advances in
five years, making more therapies available
to more patients, while also improving our
ability to prevent cancer and detect it at an
early stage,” according to the White House’s
fact sheet on the program.
The first steps in achieving these goals
are to accelerate cancer research efforts,
break down barriers to progress by enhancing data access, and foster collaboration among researchers, patients, public
institutions, and private companies. Special
attention will be paid to cancer prevention,
genomic analyses, pediatric cancer, and developing and optimizing immunotherapy,
which has already shown to be an effective
treatment in lymphoma and leukemia.
But, while the overarching goals of
the Initiative are broad, the initial recom-
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ASH Clinical News
mendations are expected to be carefully
targeted at the areas that have the most
potential to make significant advances
in cancer research and care, according to
Dinah Singer, PhD, acting deputy director
of the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
“We are looking for ideas or recommendations that are aspirational, but feasible,”
Dr. Singer told ASH Clinical News. “We
can’t be starting something wholly ab initio;
it has to be something that we know will
have huge potential to help cancer patients.”
It’s an exciting endeavor that could lead to
promising advances in the field of oncology
and malignant hematology; however, the
work to determine exactly where the project’s
funding will be distributed and which efforts
will be supported has only just begun.
“This is an unprecedented opportunity
to make science count for patients, but we
do need to make sure that we have realistic goals and expectations for researchers,
caregivers, and patients alike,” said Kenneth
Anderson, MD, president-elect of ASH and
the Kraft Family professor of medicine at the
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard
Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
Liftoff
Shortly after the State of the Union Address, President Obama issued an official
memorandum outlining the goals of the
Moonshot Initiative and establishing a
White House Cancer Moonshot Task
Force, led by Vice President Joe Biden,
charged with producing a detailed set of
recommendations on how to:
• accelerate the understanding of cancer,
including its prevention, detection,
treatment, and cure
• improve patient access and care
• support greater access to research
and data
• encourage development of cancer
treatments
• identify and address unnecessary regulatory barriers
• ensure optimal investment of federal
resources
• identify opportunities for collaboration
between public and private entities2
Vice President Biden named Greg Simon as
the executive director of the Cancer Moonshot Initiative. Mr. Simon was diagnosed
with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2014,
and was the founding president of FasterCures, a non-profit organization with the
goal of speeding up the translation between
basic research and critical medicines.
The Initiative also established an
June 2016