Price tag for Biden cancer ‘moonshot’ at $1B in Obama budget

Obama on Monday was attending the first meeting of a new federal task force – chaired by Biden – bringing various health and scientific agencies together with the Pentagon and others.

“The National Cancer Moonshot will work to accelerate these research efforts and break down barriers to progress by enhancing data access, and facilitating collaborations with researchers, doctors, philanthropies, patients, and patient advocates, and biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies”, according to a White House fact sheet.

Research into immunotherapy, combination therapy and early detection techniques will be at the center of new programs the administration hopes to create at the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.

It will present to Obama a report before December 31, just before Obama leaves office, on its findings and recommendations on cancer.

In his final budget proposal, to be released February 9, Obama will then request another $755 million for the next fiscal year to pursue a multi-year moonshot initiative, officials said.

“For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the family we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all”, Obama said at that time.

“With something as big as cancer, we have to think big”, a White House official told reporters in a background briefing Monday. Those funds would join another $195 million in new cancer funding Congress approved in its budget deal late previous year. The officials declined to be specific about how that progress would be measured, saying more information would be given in the coming weeks. But White House officials were reluctant to point to specific initiatives that the fund will target.

The “cancer moonshot” was something Vice President Biden committed to last year after his 46-year-old son Beau Biden died of brain cancer on May 30. He has pledged to figure out ways to make the federal government “partners, not impediments” in progressing toward breakthrough treatments.