As part of its national cancer moonshot efforts, the Biden administration aims to deliver $150 million in funding to developers of new technologies aimed at making tumor surgeries safer and more precise.
That includes methods to assist surgeons in visualizing any remaining cancer cells during a procedure in real time as well as imaging techniques that can help them avoid critical healthy structures such as blood vessels and nerves.
The new funds will be delivered through the government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, known as ARPA-H, which launched in 2022.
To date, the organization has handed out more than $400 million in cancer research funding spanning prevention, diagnostics and treatments, according to the White House, as part of the moonshot program’s goal to cut the national cancer death rate in half by 2047. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are set to announce the grants during a trip to New Orleans today, alongside a tour of local medical facilities.
The $150 million will be divided among eight awardees, including seven universities and one medical imaging startup: Silicon Valley-based Cision Vision, a developer of infrared technology for spotting hidden lymph nodes within excised biopsy samples.
The first main set of projects includes Tulane University, Rice University and the University of Washington to help advance the practice of establishing tumor margins during surgery. They will work on automated techniques for visualizing individual cancer cells on the surface of removed tissue slices, which can be used within operating rooms without the need for an on-site pathologist.
Meanwhile, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of California, San Francisco will aim to build new microscopes and other technologies to identify tumor remnants within the patient.
Finally, Cision Vision will join Johns Hopkins and Dartmouth College in efforts to develop tissue dyes and other methods that can be employed during surgery to avoid complications.
“We’ve made tremendous strides in how we prevent, detect, treat and survive cancer, but there is still much work to be done to improve the lives of those touched by this disease,” Karen Knudsen, Ph.D., CEO of the American Cancer Society and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, said in a statement. “Cancer cases are estimated to hit an all-time high this year, and we cannot relent in driving forward public policies that will address this.”