Vice President Biden has given President Obama his final report as vice president on the progress of the Cancer Moonshot program, the Washington Post reports.
As GenomeWeb reported yesterday, the White House announced a vast array of new initiatives that are meant to advance the Moonshot's goal of finding treatments for various types of cancer. Biden's report also says that there are still plenty of challenges to overcome, "including a lack of coordination among researchers, an 'antiquated' funding culture and unacceptably slow dissemination of important information about new treatments," WaPo says.
Biden is calling for new ways to fund research, including mechanisms to pay for high-risk high-reward research that funding agencies may tend to shy away from. He also believes access to clinical trials must be improved, that all efforts must be made to reduce cancer disparities, and that patients must have better access to screening and prevention efforts, WaPo reports.
Biden also faces the difficulty of asking a lame-duck Congress to provide additional funding for the Moonshot initiative, the article adds.
Hillary Clinton has said she will continue the Moonshot's efforts, if elected, and that she plans to ask for Biden's help. Biden has said he would like to remain involved. Donald Trump has not commented on the effort, according to WaPo.