Dive Brief:
- Next week's budget proposal from President Obama to Congress will include $755 million in funding for the Cancer Moonshot initiative, with $195 million of that earmarked for the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
- Vice President Joe Biden is on the front lines of the Cancer Moonshot initiative. His son Beau Biden died from brain cancer last year, and the vice president said that his goal is to get the public and private sectors together to work collaboratively.
- On Monday, there will be a meeting at the White House in which cabinet members and health officials will meet to discuss the initiative.
Dive Insight:
The Cancer Moonshot 2020 initiative is anything if not ambitious. One major goal of this initiative is to design, initiate, and complete randomized clinical trials at all stages of cancer in up to 20 tumor types in as many as 20,000 patients in multiple phase 1 to 3 trials by year 2020---with a focus on advancing the goals of immunotherapy research and breakthroughs.
Much of the funding is coming through various government sources, and President Obama is attempting to bolster the war chest for this effort by allocating federal funding. The $755 million budgetary allotment is intended to be used over multiple years, mainly by the NIH.
In addition to the money received by the $195 million earmarked for the NIH, the FDA would receive 10% of the funding as well. FDA funding will be spent on a new "virtual" Oncology Center of Excellence, and on data sharing initiatives.