The United States is seeking “to end cancer as we know it”, President Joe Biden has said.
He said the country should aim to reduce the incidence of cancer by at least 50 per cent over the next 25 years.
Speaking on Monday, he said he wanted to set a long-term goal to rally American ingenuity to find cures for cancer once and for all, in the same way the country had landed men on the moon in the 1960s.
He said he believed his new cancer plan was “bold, ambitious but completely do-able”.
He said he wanted more cancers turned from a death sentence to a chronic condition with which people could live.
He said significant advances had been made in the treatment of cancer over recent years but it was still responsible for more deaths in the US with the exception of heart disease.
“For each of the ways we know cancers today, we know we can change the trajectory. For example, in breast cancer scientists are looking at whether MRNA vaccine technology, that brought us safe Covid-19 vaccines, could be used to stop cancer cells when they first arise.”
He said science was looking at targeting the right treatment, to use genetics and immune response, to see which combinations of treatment were likely to work best.
Mr Biden said that under his new “supercharged moonshot programme” he would use his authority as president to increase funding to break logjams and speed breakthroughs.
He said he was establishing a “cancer cabinet” to drive a whole-of-government effort and to share every possible asset, including those of the space agency Nasa, which he said knew more about radiation than any doctor, and the department of defence.
“Imagine the possibility of vaccines that could prevent cancer; imagine molecular zip codes that could deliver drugs and gene therapy precisely to the right tissue; imagine simple blood tests during your annual physical that could detect cancer early; imagine getting a simple shot instead of a gruelling chemo,” the president said in his speech in Boston.
Mr Biden announced his new “cancer moonshot” programme on the 60th anniversary of the day president John F Kennedy set a deadline for the US to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s.
He highlighted the establishment of a new advanced research projects agency for health, which he first announced earlier this year.
The White House said the new agency would support programmes and projects that would deal with challenges ranging from the molecular to the societal, with the potential to transform entire areas of medicine and health in order to prevent, detect and treat some of the most complex diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and cancer, providing benefits for all Americans.
Mr Biden also signed an executive order on Monday that aimed to boost biotechnology and biomanufacturing to ensure that cutting-edge technologies such as those needed to fight cancer would be developed and made in the US.
