The Biden administration announced it would invest nearly $115 million into funding three new cancer research projects on Tuesday, which focus on discovering new ways to detect and treat cancer early.
The projects will be based out of three universities and funded through agreements with the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H. The agreement is part of the administration’s 'cancer moonshot' agenda.
GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN: HOW YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY PAYMENTS WILL BE AFFECTED
“ARPA-H is paving the way for unprecedented and groundbreaking research on cancer," Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in the agency’s announcement. "This work will be a pillar in this Administration’s ambitious and important goal to cut the cancer death rate in half in 25 years."
The first award went to Rice University in Houston, Texas, which will focus on securing better outcomes in immunotherapy treatments for patients with ovarian, pancreatic, and other difficult cancers. The university will receive up to $45 million for the project, titled “Targeted Hybrid Oncotherapeutic Regulation," or THOR for short. The compensation includes funding for the first phase of a clinical trial to beat recurrent ovarian cancer.
The second project will be led by the Georgia Institute of Technology and will focus on detecting tumors when they are at the earliest stages, and thereby are most treatable. The project will use synthetic biology and cell engineering to map cancer cell biomarkers to improve early detection. The institute will be awarded up to $49.5 million for the project.
The last project is from the University of Missouri, which aims to engineer bacteria to target and fight off cancerous tumors without the side effects of current treatments. The planned project is expected to be inexpensive immunotherapy, and the university was granted just under $20 million in funding.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“At ARPA-H, we recognize the urgency of the health challenges facing cancer patients and their families and we are committed to funding truly transformative research that can improve health outcomes for everyone,” ARPA-H Director Renee Wegrzyn said in the announcement. “With these awards, we hope to see crucial advancements in patient-tailored therapies, better and earlier tumor detection methods, and cell therapies that can help the immune system target cancer cells for destruction.”
The agency announced it was accepting abstracts for its Open Broad Agency Announcement program in March and will continue accepting abstracts until March 2024. The projects already approved will continue to receive funding if they meet certain milestones, the agency said.