The Obama administration’s “cancer moonshot” is facing several major hurdles to success, such as funding and scientific reality, but officials are hopeful that public-private partnerships like the one Johns Hopkins University unveiled last week will help them achieve what so far has proven impossible.
The government-directed effort to find a cure for cancer, which is being spearheaded by Vice President Joe Biden, got a boost last week when former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and philanthropist Sidney Kimmel each added $50 million to the $25 million the university raised to launch a new cancer research institute.
“A key element of the cancer moonshot is to incentivize more cooperation between the government and the private sector,” Bloomberg and Biden wrote in Bloomberg View after their March 29 joint appearance in Baltimore to announce the Bloomberg-Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy’s creation.
“We recognize that while the U.S. government has tremendous resources at its disposal, we also know a lot of our best expertise exists outside the government, within the private medical and research community,” the duo wrote.
Biden, who is throwing himself into Obama’s cancer “moonshot” initiative his final year in office rather than seeking the presidency himself, knows he cannot count on subsequent presidents to guarantee his legacy on this very personal issue. Biden partly attributed his decision to skip another run for the White House to last year’s death of his son, Beau, of brain cancer.
Efforts similar to the Johns Hopkins initiative may be key to ensuring that Biden’s moonshot goes anywhere at all, and Biden seems to know it.
“I don’t want to leave the impression the federal government is the only answer. It’s not,” Biden said at the Johns Hopkins event. “This is a great example of one of the core elements of the cancer moonshot task force: facilitating cooperation between government, the private sector, academia and philanthropy.”
Obama further elevated the cancer initiative by broaching it during a meeting last week with South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that was focused on North Korea’s nuclear aggression.
“We couldn’t agree more about the importance of curing cancer and what it can do to promote public health and welfare,” Park said. “And we welcome this path-breaking initiative by the United States.”
Money is a major concern. Obama directed the National Institutes of Health to spend $195 million this year aimed at “high-risk, high-return” cancer research and is seeking $755 million in fiscal year 2017 to continue the project.
“I predict we will add another billion dollars to cancer research this year,” Biden envisioned during the Johns Hopkins speech.
But Congress will have a say in whether to provide that funding, and so far, Republicans are showing resistance. Many congressional Republicans are supportive of the plan’s goal, and approved additional cancer-research funding last year, but they bristle at Obama’s budget request because he proposes paying for it with mandatory spending, which avoids the overall spending limits set by 2011’s Budget Control Act.
“While the proposals for curing cancer and combating opioid abuse are worthy goals, the president’s proposed methods are simply unacceptable budget gimmicks that irresponsibly rely on mandatory spending,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a House Budget Committee member, stated after Obama released his budget that also seeks a major boost for programs aimed at countering opioid overuse.
And as glad researchers and cancer-fighting advocacy groups are for their cause’s turn in the spotlight, many are skeptical given the institutional and scientific hurdles.
Biden consistently talks about breaking down the “silos” that prevent institutions from sharing data and research critical to breakthroughs, an idea others support.
“Not just doctors, but patients, doctors, academia, industry, institutions, government, philanthropy — we all have to work together,” Columbia University’s Dr. Azra Raza acknowledged when Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a biotech entrepreneur, launched a parallel initiative in January.
Institutions must remove the motivation for maintaining those silos, Dr. Chi Van Dang, director of Penn’s cancer center, told the trade publication Statwhen Biden visited there. Agreeing to share the windfalls of research and development is a good start, he said.
“Whoever wins, we divide the pot,” he said about such partnerships. “It’s just like the Powerball.”
Still, the Obama administration is expecting the moon of doctors and scientists, some experts argue.
“There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical: This is not the first presidential war against cancer, President Nixon tried that once and, alas, cancer still has the upper hand,” the Brookings Institution’s Walter Valdivia wrote after the task force’s kickoff. “The technological aspects of curing cancer are more challenging than achieving space travel.”
No one can “be sure that even another Democrat in the White House would see this project to fruition,” Valdivia added. “In effect, neither Mr. Obama nor his appointed ‘mission control,’ Vice President Biden, have time in office to see fruits from their efforts on this front.”
In the meantime, Biden is working hard to achieve the administration’s goal of making 10 years of cancer research progress in five. He has met with more than 200 researchers, doctors, philanthropic groups, hospital administrators, biotechnologists and pharmaceutical companies in the hopes of laying the groundwork quickly.
Last month, he named former drug company executive and cancer survivor Greg Simon executive director of the Cancer Moonshot Task Force. A high-profile visit to Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in March was just one of many Biden has made since January, when he made the University of Pennsylvania, Beau Biden’s alma mater, the moonshot’s formal launching pad.
