Topline
The Biden administration announced Tuesday up to $150 million in federal grants for researchers developing advanced tumor-removal surgeries for people with cancer, part of his ambitious “cancer moonshot” effort that he reportedly intends to focus on promoting in his last months in office.
President Joe Biden will announce $150 million in funding as part of his Cancer Moonshot on Tuesday.
Key Facts
The White House said both the president and First Lady Jill Biden will announce the funding effort in New Orleans on Tuesday.
The funds will be awarded to eight teams of researchers working on the Precision Surgical Interventions (PSI) program under ARPA-H—the federal agency focusing on advanced health research.
According to the White House, the PSI program intends to make tumor removals “more effective” by cutting down the number of repeat surgeries and reducing damage to healthy tissues.
The grantees include researchers at Louisiana’s Tulane University (up to $22.9 million), Texas’ Rice University ($18 million) and the University of Washington ($21.1 million) —who are working to develop more advanced imaging systems.
Other grantees included Johns Hopkins University ($20.9 million), the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ($32.6 million)—who are working on developing advanced microscopes—and Dartmouth College ($31.3 million) and Cision Vision ($22.3 million)—who are creating ways to help minimize damage to a patient’s blood vessels and nerves during surgery.
Crucial Quote
Biden, who dropped his reelection bid last month, said in an Oval Office speech at the time: “Over the next six months, I’ll be focused on doing my job as president…I’m going to keep speaking out to protect our kids from gun violence, our planet from climate crisis as an existential threat, and I will keep fighting for my Cancer Moonshot, so we can end cancer as we know it, because we can do it.”
Key Background
Restarted in 2022, Biden’s cancer moonshot has set a goal of reducing the cancer death rate in the U.S. by at least 50%—preventing more than 4 million deaths from the disease—by 2047. In September last year, the White House announced $240 million in grants for researchers working on “cancer-related projects.” The moonshot was first launched in 2016, under the name “Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot” as part of the 21st Century Cures Act. The president lost his oldest son Beau to brain cancer in 2015.
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