On February 2, 2022, United States President Joe Biden re-launched the Cancer Moonshot with renewed White House leadership and new goals: to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50% over the next 25 years and improve the experience of people living with and surviving cancer. At that time, he announced the formation of the Cancer Cabinet, which will bring together departments and White House components throughout government to “address cancer on multiple fronts.”
The Cancer Cabinet includes individuals from many different government agencies, including: the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Agriculture (USDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Cancer Institute (NCI), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Domestic Policy Council (DPC), Office of the First Lady (OFL), Office of the Vice President (OVP), Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Office of Legislative Affairs (OLA), Office of Public Engagement (OPE), and additional members as needed.
On March 16, 2022, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden joined a Cancer Cabinet meeting, where priorities for the Cancer Moonshot agenda were further refined. During the meeting, participants (including senior White House officials and leadership from across federal departments and agencies) focused on what the agencies can accomplish through new programs and collaborations. A small sampling of some of those projects and goals are listed below.
Food and Drug Administration
The FDA is charged with taking steps to “significantly reduce tobacco-related morbidity and mortality in the United States as part of cancer prevention efforts.” To that end, the agency is working on a set of tobacco product standard regulations intended to lower initiation, addiction, and continued use of combustible tobacco products. Included in those regulations would be a proposed menthol product standard rule that would prohibit menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes and a second proposed flavored cigars product standard rule that would prohibit the use of characterizing flavors (including menthol and fruit flavors) in cigars.
Department of Defense
The DOD previously launched the Applied Proteogenomics OrganizationaL Learning and Outcomes (APOLLO) network as a way for NCI, the DOD, and the VA to collaborate and incorporate proteogenomics into patient care. As of the re-igniting announcement, the APOLLO network includes 13 DOD and VA hospitals which started with 8 cancer-specific programs, including studies in lung, breast, prostate, ovarian, pancreatic, testicular, and brain cancers, and will now expand to all cancer types. DOD will also ensure that the APOLLO trial network will expand to every DOD hospital.
National Cancer Institute
The NCI will launch an effort to implement and evaluate multilevel and culturally tailored outreach and education programs. The ultimate goal of the programs will be to increase referral of and ultimately, the accrual of, underrepresented racial and ethnic minority populations to NCI-supported clinical trials.
NCI will also support Specialized Centers that will build capacity in cancer prevention and control research. NCI will also work to promote programs and practices that will alleviate the health-related effects of the persistent poverty in certain areas.