While the White House's revival of the Cancer Moonshot — a program to cut cancer deaths by 50 percent over the next 25 years — is an ambitious and important goal, more can be done today to benefit cancer patients, according to Edward Abrahams, PhD.
In a Feb. 13 opinion piece published in The Washington Post, Dr. Abrahams, president of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, said, "While it is important to pursue long-term goals, it is also critical to ensure that cancer patients today benefit from programs, tools and therapies that have already been developed."
Advancing access to currently available treatments is one place to start, he said, citing data from the American Cancer Society that estimates 130,000 Americans with cancer die annually because they don't benefit from existing science like personalized treatments.
"There are, for example, more than 90 cancer therapies on the market that are linked to identifiable biological markers. However, studies show that as many as 40 percent of patients who test positive for actionable genetic mutations never receive the therapies that are indicated by those tests," Dr. Abrahams said, adding that the majority of the nation's cancer patients are treated in community health systems, which often don't have resources to "implement the latest advances in cancer."
The U.S. should work with the private sector to shore up the production of cell-based cancer therapies to lower their cost, similar to the way the government worked with the private sector to rapidly develop COVID-19 vaccines, Dr. Abrahams said.
He also advocated for Medicaid expansion to ensure more low-income Americans have access to cancer care; government support in clinical trials so more health insurance plans will cover new diagnostics; and for the government to ensure future cancer developments are more accessible as it works toward its 25-year goal to cut cancer deaths in half.
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