19-05-2025
What to know about Joe Biden's Cancer Moonshot
Former President Biden is being praised following his prostate cancer diagnosis for his efforts in spearheading Cancer Moonshot, an initiative that's designed to improve treatments and combat rates of the disease.
The big picture: Former President Obama, who appointed Biden to lead the drive a year on from his son Beau Biden's 2015 death from brain cancer, said after it was announced that his VP has an aggressive for of cancer that's spread to his bones: "Nobody has done more to find breakthrough treatments for cancer in all its forms than Joe."
State of play: The Obama White House announced Cancer Moonshot in 2016 "to eliminate cancer as we know it" and kickstarted the national program with $1 billion in research funding.
It became known as the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
Biden relaunched Cancer Moonshot in 2022 with the goals of reducing the age-adjusted death rate from cancer by 50% over 25 years and "making a decade's worth of progress in cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment in five years," per a National Cancer Institute post.
Tens of millions in funding has gone toward cancer programs since then, including $150 million last year to develop technologies that the Biden White House said would help with tumor-removal surgeries.
Cancer Moonshot has "supported 250 research projects and more than 70 programs and consortia," according to a National Cancer Institute (NCI) post that was last updated in April.
What he's saying: "After Beau died, I literally visited every major cancer research facility in the world — seven of them around the world. I wanted to see what was possible, and I did," then-President Biden said last September, according to recorded remarks of his speech before world leaders and scientists to announce the Quad Cancer Moonshot in his home state of Delaware.
"They're making significant progress," Biden said after the Quad heads of state from the U.S., Australia, Japan and India committed to the drive. "And it's not just because it's personal — this —but it's because it's possible," he added.
"Our goal is to team up, end cancer around the world, and start — starting with cervical cancer. I know it may sound unrealistic, but it's not."
How it worked: "Funded through the 21st Century Cures Act, the Cancer Moonshot brought together patients, advocates, researchers, and clinicians dedicated to utilizing resources across the government, academia, and the private sector," per the NCI.
Using a panel of experts' broad recommendations as a guide, NCI said it "identified goals that would reflect this guidance and accelerate discovery, increase collaboration, and expand data sharing across the cancer community."
Among the accomplishments the NCI lists the Cancer Moonshot achieving are expanding prevention drives, developing "new enabling cancer technologies to characterize tumors and test therapies" and intensifying research into the leading causes of childhood cancers.
