Back in January, President Barack Obama signed a memorandum that officially kicked off Vice President Joe Biden's "moonshot" initiative to improve cancer care and research in his final year in office.
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The memorandum established a task force, which is chaired by Vice President Biden and includes the Department of Defense, HHS, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, among other executive branch departments and agencies.
Nearly one year later, Vice President Biden is scheduled to give the final "moonshot" report Monday. In his report, Vice President Biden is expected to tell President Barack Obama that the "moonshot" effort infused new urgency in the fight against cancer but that there are still challenges, including a lack of coordination among researchers, an "antiquated" funding culture and unacceptably slow dissemination of important information about new treatments, reports The Washington Post.
Specifically, Vice President Biden is critical of incentives that reward scientists for individual successes rather than team efforts that "can lead to new answers and new solutions," according to the report. The vice president also took aim at problems recruiting and retaining patients for clinical trials, which he said can cause costly delays, the report states.
As solutions to these and other challenges, Vice President Biden called for new funding mechanisms for research, particularly the work sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, to encourage "high risk, high reward research," according to the report. He also called for improved access to clinical trials, greater efforts to lessen cancer disparities, and enhanced prevention and screening efforts, according to the report. While efforts to address some of the issues are underway, more work is necessary, he said, according to the report.
Meanwhile, Vice President's report does include some new commitments, according to The Washington Post, including millions of dollars of donations for research, as well as data-sharing partnerships aimed at easing data access for physicians, researchers and patients.
The future of the "moonshot" is unclear. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has said that she would like to continue it, while Republican nominee Donald Trump, hasn't commented on the matter, according to the report.
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