Biden Discusses More Details on Cancer Moonshot Initiative

Vice President Joe Biden revealed more information today regarding the plan to cure cancer he was placed in charge of during last week’s State of the Union.

He called for quicker drug approvals during a panel at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Part of the initiative would involve expediting the process of bringing new types of immunotherapies to market, reports Reuters.

Biden told the audience he recently met with the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and three unnamed drug companies at his home to discuss the plan, in which both sides agreed to do more to help patients receive potent therapies.

Immunotherapies have shown significant promise in using the human body’s natural defenses to fend off cancer, but Reuters explains that these drugs can be very expensive (reaching up to $100,000 a year per patient) while pharmaceutical firms have been reticent in divulging information on early-stage medical experiments.

The Vice President called for cancer researchers to help “learn what it would take to make major progress” on beating the disease so he can better educate the public about what steps need to be taken, according to Stat News.

He told the crowd “My job…is to educate the public in very simple language why I’m going to ask so much more of them — a lot more money, a lot more tax dollars, a lot more cooperation.”

Data sharing will be a core component of this program, too. Biden is seeking a way to build a data infrastructure to enable better sharing of medical information, but it was acknowledged during the panel that privacy concerns could be an impediment, writes Stat News.

Biden has made finding a cure for cancer his personal mission after losing his son Beau to a brain tumor last year.

Cancer researchers have expressed concerns that this strategy is presenting an “over-simplified” solution for a complex problem. It would take more than one designated “cure” to eliminate all forms of this condition, they say.