SensNews Feb 2016

Sensor100

February 2016

Healthcare

Cancer MoonShot 2020

No one whose life has been

touched by cancer, and that

means almost everyone as sta-

tistically one in two of us will be

diagnosed with the disease, can

fail to support the concerted ef-

fort to find a cure by 2020.

The Project Moonshot 2020 name reportedly came from a speech

Vice President Biden made in the Rose Garden in October 2015,

promising a “moonshot” to cure cancer.The speech itself was trig-

gered by the death of Biden’s son to cancer.

By pooling the resources of a handful of pharmaceutical companies,

the project’s stated goal is to aggressively focus on rapidly develop-

ing new treatments for the disease. Some cancer specialists have

expressed optimism that science has entered a “new era with the

ability to rapidly determine the sequences of genes in tumor cells,

searching for mutations that may be driving the cancer’s growth.”

Others call it “unrealistic.” ( NewYork Times Jan 13, 2016).

Cancer therapy had made enormous advances in the past decade

and more people are passing that magic hurdle of 5 years post-treat-

ment. Bringing the concerted resources of the US scientific commu-

nity to bear on the problem can only be beneficial in so many ways.

Meanwhile,

Sensor100

will be fighting its corner for better, faster,

cheaper and more effective diagnostic tools, up to our conference,

and beyond.