In his address to the clinicians, researchers, and patients at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in April, US Vice President Joe Biden, revealed that the goal of the #cancermoonshot initiative is to accomplish 10 years of cancer research in just five years, effectively doubling the pace of cancer research (1).

Treatments developed from cancer research have come a long way with dramatic differences in the experiences and prognoses for patients, just looking back over the last 25 years. How can we double the pace of cancer research? The #cancermoonshot will one, encourage data sharing among researchers, particularly data from clinical trials. Second, it seeks to increase collaboration across industry, academic and government scientists—each community being positioned to make unique contributions to the field. And third, the initiative looks to change the current grants award process that encourages scientists to keep data and results “quiet” until they can be published or protected legally as intellectual property.

Immunotherapy is an especially hot field in cancer research (2) that relies on the immune system to better fight cancer. Continue reading “Shooting for the Moon: Better Assays to Hit Our Cancer Research Targets”