President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden on Wednesday will convene their Cancer Cabinet to announce a slew of new actions to advance the White House Cancer Moonshot initiative, including a $240 million investment aimed at accelerating new ways to prevent, detect, treat and survive cancer.
The $240 million will be provided to researchers and innovators for cancer-related projects, including new tools to improve early detection, pursue new treatments, such as targeting cancer inside the body with bacteria, and designing devices that can deliver treatments directly to cancer cells in an effort to treat tumors more effectively.
Battling cancer is part of President Biden’s “Unity Agenda” — a list of broad-consensus priorities he unveiled at last year’s State of the Union address — and an issue close to his heart. His son, Beau, died in 2015 after battling an aggressive brain cancer.
“Joe Biden is determined to be a President for all Americans,” said White House Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed. “That is why his Unity Agenda is about making progress on the biggest challenges we all face regardless of party. At his direction, the entire federal government is mobilizing like never before to end cancer as we know it.”
As president, Biden set an ambitious goal with his Cancer Moonshot initiative: cutting cancer death rates in half in the next quarter-century.
The administration in July announced a program to develop new technologies for removing cancerous tumors with better precision and accuracy, the first of its kind for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) that President Biden established with Congress last year to develop breakthroughs in cancer and disease prevention, detection and treatment. The first project funded through the ARPA-H program is one that aims to develop generalizable mRNA platforms that can be used to train the immune system to more effectively fight cancer, along with other diseases.
“Cancer has touched nearly every family in America, including ours,” Biden said in July. “That’s why Jill and I believe so deeply in the Cancer Moonshot, which will be transformational for people across the country and around the world. That’s why it’s a central component of my Unity Agenda, which aims to bring people from both parties together to get big things done for the American people.”
“Together, we are also moving toward a world where cancer loses its power,” the president said. “That’s a goal worthy of our great nation.”
Wednesday’s announcements also include a “biomedical data fabric toolbox” — a partnership with the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute and other groups to try and streamline data accessibility — a nationwide health network aimed at bringing cancer clinical trials to underserved communities and a new award for community health centers that meet certain benchmarks in cancer screening targets.
Other announcements Wednesday are aimed at tackling the biggest single driver of cancer deaths nationwide: smoking.
The American Cancer Society says that tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S., with smoking accounting for 20% of all cancers and about 30% of all cancer deaths nationwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cigarette smoking is the No. 1 risk factor for lung cancer, and is linked to 80-90% of lung cancer deaths.
The administration is set to announce awardees of a five-year, $15 million program to help increase adoption, implementation, and enforcement of policies prohibiting the sale of menthol and other flavored tobacco products, a new plan to expand efforts to help Americans quit smoking and a pilot program aimed at increasing veteran engagement in tobacco-use treatment programs.
The Cancer Moonshot will also announce new commitments from a slew of non-governmental organizations, including the American Cancer Society, which will create and implement a standardized national curricula for professional, non-clinician navigators to support people with cancer, CVS Health, which is set to launch an expanded smoking cessation program, and TOUCH, the Black Breast Cancer Alliance, which will commit to reaching 350,000 Black women and motivating 25,000 into trial portals in an effort to boost Black women’s breast cancer clinical trial participation by 2025.
