President Biden announces initiative for advanced cancer research

President Joe Biden said the first initiative focused on cancer of his Advanced Health Research Agency is in “a significant historical moment in the fight to end cancer as we know”. This initiative aims to help doctors distinguish more easily between cancerous cells and healthy tissue during operations that could improve the patient's life.

The Agency of Advanced Health Research Projects, or ARPA-H, is launching an exact surgical intervention programme, seeking ideas from the public and private sector to explore how to dramatically improve the results of the fight on cancer in the coming decades by developing better surgical intervention to treat the disease.

The initiative can significantly improve cancer treatments and bring scientific advances that have yet unknown applications, said Aracti Prabhakar, director of the White House's Science and Technology Office.

Many cancer treatments still begin with surgery. So, developing new technology to make that first step more accurate can really revolutionize the way we're going to be able to treat cancer”.

The agency will host a conference in Chicago in September for interested researchers. This is part of President Biden's attempt on “to fight cancer”, which was approved by two-party support. /Vosa