Biden Issues Challenge to Speed Cancer Discoveries
June 29, 2016 -- Vice President Joe Biden challenged American researchers Wednesday to cram 10 years of work against cancer into 5 years by boosting clinical trials, enlisting big data, and making life-saving drugs cheaper.
Biden, who lost his 46-year-old son Beau to the disease last year, is the point man for the Obama administration’s billion-dollar “Moonshot” aimed at finding a cure. He headlined a nationwide conference on the project Wednesday vowing the federal government would help break down barriers that are hindering collaboration.
“I don’t want this to come across as somehow the federal government has the answer,” Biden said. “We don’t have the answers. We’ve got to figure out how to get out of your way, and you guys need to figure out how to get in each other’s way more.”
But he also warned that institutions that didn’t promptly report data could find their funding slashed -- and he sharply criticized the cost of some drugs.
"Treatments need to be affordable. The cost of lifesaving drugs is astronomical. We have to come up with a better way," Biden said. He said one drug, which he didn’t identify, shot up from $26,000 to $120,000 a year in 15 years.
"Tell me -- tell me -- tell me, what is the justification for that?" he asked. He acknowledged that companies may spend hundreds of millions pursuing unsuccessful leads, “but I want to raise some questions here, and I hope we get some answers.”
Biden’s remarks at Howard University were beamed to a network of 270 meetings that brought doctors, patients, and scientists together with government officials and technical experts to talk about how to speed up the search for a cure. The White House kicked off the day by announcing a list of steps it hopes will help, including using super-computers at the Department of Energy and IBM’s famed Watson to sort through the mountains of data scientists and doctors are generating.
Those machines can be used to share findings on diagnoses, treatment outcomes, gene changes, and more, said Walter Curran, MD, executive director of the Winship Cancer Institute at Atlanta’s Emory University.
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