President Biden’s decision to step down rather than pursue a second term in office allows him to prioritize some of his administration’s goals in the time he otherwise might have spent campaigning. One of the programs that will benefit from this increased focus is his “moonshot” effort to fight cancer.
President Biden recently announced $150 million in awards spread out among eight research centers. The money will go towards pioneering new methods of precision cancer surgery. Here’s a summary of exactly what the “moonshot” program is, and the role data plays in its success.
History of the “moonshot”
The “moonshot” terminology dates back to Joe Biden’s days as President Barack Obama’s vice president. In the final years of their term, President Biden’s son died of brain cancer, leading him to call for “an absolute national commitment to end cancer as we know it today.” In 2016, the Obama administration announced the initiative to find new cancer cures, which Vice President Biden called a “moonshot” that he hoped would lead to a decade’s worth of advances in cancer research in five years.
President Biden has made the initiative an important part of his administration. In 2022, the Biden team set a goal of cutting the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent by 2047. Health experts would rather talk about making progress in the fight against cancer through early diagnosis and improved treatments than say they are looking for a cure for cancer, which they feel is putting it too simply.
Research funding
The most recent awards were made through an organization founded in 2022, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). ARPA-H is aimed at driving biomedical innovation, and its Precision Surgical Interventions program is working to make surgical removal of tumors more effective and precise. The eight research centers receiving the money include Tulane University, where President Biden made the announcement in early August. At Tulane, researchers demonstrated the technology they were developing, which uses imaging of cells on tumor sites to verify for surgeons that cancer cells have been fully removed and to reduce the need for follow-up surgeries.
The announcement came a week after the Biden administration awarded nearly $9 million to 18 health centers to improve access to cancer screenings in underserved communities. One of the main goals of the initiative, though, isn’t just making individual gains—it’s encouraging collaboration among researchers.
The importance of sharing data
President Biden talked about touring cancer centers in Australia and Ireland and how there isn’t enough communication between researchers. “We don’t want to keep information,” he said. “We want to share it.” Part of the solution is making sure everyone has access to important data.
Dr. Kimryn Rathmell, director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), says that achieving some of President Biden’s goals requires data at every level, specifically citing a childhood cancer program in which NCI heavily relies on data. “We’re looking at interoperability and helping to be a part of maximizing data utility through these really important efforts,” she said. “The childhood cancer data initiative is creating this data integration that really was not available before, which is not just a data set—I think it is changing the culture and the community of the way we practice something that I would love to see expand even beyond pediatrics.”
Health policy officials are working with researchers and developers to provide data elements to federal health agencies that allows everyone to work from the same data pipeline. New elements targeted this year include a patient’s treatment history, test results, and disease status.
The emphasis on sharing information is important, but it can only be done if the technology can work together. The right analytics solution can integrate data from any number of sources to make sure whoever needs it is looking at the exact same information. It is then that decisions can be made using all available information, or pieces can be put together by looking at all of the available data at once.
These lessons from federal agencies can be applied to smaller organizations as well. Communication is needed at any level, and integrating data from across an organization can be just as important as bringing together research from around the world. In order to do that, organizations need to make sure they have the tools in place that can lead to success.
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