A University of Washington-led research team could receive up to $21.1 million as part of a federal grant aiming to reduce cancer deaths in the U.S.
— a goal President Joe Biden has championed for years and revisited Tuesday. The total award amounts to about $150 million and comes from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, Biden announced during a visit to New Orleans with first lady Jill Biden. The pair toured medical facilities that receive funding to investigate cancer treatments, including Tulane University, which is also one of eight research teams around the U.
S. that will receive grant dollars, according to The Associated Press. The funding is part of Biden’s “moonshot” initiative, which aims to find a cure for the deadly disease and cut U.
S. cancer fatalities by 50% over the next 25 years. “We’re moving quickly because we know that all families touched by cancer are in a race against time,” Biden said Tuesday.
“I’m a congenital optimist about what Americans can do.” In addition to UW and Tulane, the grant awardees come from Dartmouth College; Johns Hopkins University; Rice University; the University of California, San Francisco; the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Cision Vision in Mountain View, California. Each team will be focused on ways to help surgeons more successfully remove tumors in people with cancer.
Cancer is the second-highest cause of death of people in the U.S. after heart disease.
About 2 million new cancer c.