July 27 (UPI) — The White House announced on Thursday that the Biden cancer moonshot program will fund the first advanced research projects that will allow surgeons to remove cancerous tumors with more precision and accuracy.
The Agency for Health program, or ARPA-H, was created to develop novel technologies that will help surgeons remove cancer with better health outcomes. The White House said the program represents major milestones in the treatment of cancer and other diseases.
The program’s new Precision Surgical Interventions, of PSI, program will enable surgeons to successfully remove cancer from patients through a single operation by better identifying and differentiating between healthy and cancer tissue.
“Technologies developed through this program will also help surgeons spot and avoid important structures such as nerves, blood vessels, and lymph nodes, which can be mistakenly damaged during invasive surgical procedures,” the White House said.
The Biden cancer moonshot program will ensure that this technology will be accessible in rural and urban areas. The program, which is compared to the United States’ moon-landing program of the ’60s, seeks to to accelerate scientific research, data and treatment for an array of human cancers.
“As surgical oncologists know, removing cancer can be incredibly challenging,” Biden said in a statement. “Despite many innovations in treating cancer, surgery is often the first best step. Researchers and innovators across the country are pioneering new techniques and technologies to make cancer removal surgeries more precise, accurate, and achievable.
“It’s an exciting horizon in cancer research and development that could save and extend many lives. Now, through ARPA-H, we will fund promising new approaches to removing cancer surgically.”
The moonshot program has set ambitious goals of cutting the cancer death rate in half and preventing more than 4 million cancer deaths by 2047. The program also seeks to improve the experience of cancer patients their families and caregivers.
The Biden administration created ARPA-H last year, modeling it after the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which focuses on breakthroughs in security technologies.
