Guest Commentary: Cancer Moonshot is Under Way

In his final State of the Union Address, President Obama announced that Vice President Joe Biden — who last year lost his son to brain cancer — would spearhead a "moonshot" to cure cancer.

At the University of Colorado Cancer Center, we already take part in research and data gathering to contribute to the vice president's mission.

President Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971. We pictured researchers and doctors storming the beaches of the disease, putting an end to it. While this war led to inroads against cancer, it did not end it. We learned we are not fighting one fight, but many related fights.

Cancer is not one disease. Basic research into the biology of cancer shows us that each instance is a complex mix of genetics. One breast cancer may be caused by a tumor's ability to over-utilize the hormone estrogen to drive its growth; we have shown at the CU Cancer Center that other breast cancers may depend on receptors for the hormone androgen in much the same way. However, science spanning from experiments with cells in the laboratory to clinical trials with human patients have given us medicines like the drug tamoxifen to control estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer and the drug enzalutamide to control androgen-receptor-positive breast cancer.

This work requires collaboration and support. Because we may be working with small percentages of patients, no single institution is likely to see enough patients with any subtype of cancer to draw meaningful conclusions about potential treatments. Just like the field of cancer research is working with innovative new strategies to target diseases, the field as a whole is evolving new ways to collaborate in order to test these treatments with populations large enough to demonstrate their effect.

The CU Cancer Center collaborates with 10 other major cancer research centers to share data in a partnership known as the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN). In this partnership, samples from patient tumors are paired with information describing their treatments and results. This information is collected in a shared database. Now cancer researchers within the ORIEN network can draw conclusions based on 11 times the number of patients. And to date, over 124,000 cancer patients have agreed to donate tumor samples that could show genetic abnormalities needed to match them with targeted clinical trials of new medicines that could control their form of the disease.

In 2014, Reps. Diana Degette, D-Colo., and Fred Upton, R-Mich., worked together on the 21st Century Cures Initiative to get new, effective treatments to the people who need them. This fact-finding initiative, in which I have been honored to participate, influenced the national adoption in 2015 of the Precision Medicine Initiative. With an initial budget of $215 million, this initiative "promises to accelerate biomedical discoveries and provide clinicians with new tools, knowledge, and therapies to select which treatments will work best for which patients," according to WhiteHouse.gov.

The United States has the world's most advanced infrastructure of cancer scientists and technology. This infrastructure of skill and tools is allowing us to pick apart the biology of cancer. We are creating a framework of collaboration and data sharing that lets us understand the effects of our medicines. Our representatives in government are recognizing the human and economic benefits of continuing to lead the world in biomedical research. We are poised to save lives; we are poised to control cancers in ever-increasing percentages of patients. The new, more nuanced approach in the field of cancer research is showing and will show results. Watching patients live longer, better lives is the most inspiring result of modern cancer research.

It's exciting to think this "moonshot" will generate the funding and public support needed to save even more lives.