Cancer Moonshot: Don’t let bad policy eclipse medical innovation 

In 2016, then-Vice President Biden launched the Cancer Moonshot Initiative with the goal of developing the next generation of cancer treatments. In 2022, now-President Biden relaunched the Moonshot Initiative with a new goal: reduce cancer deaths by half within 25 years and improve cancer survivors’ lives. 

This is an ambitious and realistic goal welcomed by the millions of families who have been affected by cancer. Based on the track record of America’s life science innovators, it’s an achievable goal.  

Since 1991, the cancer death rate in the United States has fallen by 33 percent. To put it another way, an estimated 3.8 million lives have been saved over the past 30 years. Furthermore, the five-year relative cancer survival rate reached 68 percent in 2018, from 49 percent in the mid-1970s. 

Advancements to target, treat, and ultimately cure cancer are improving, evolving, and progressing at breakneck speed. However, recent policy changes in Washington may bring this momentum to a screeching halt.  

Over the last several years, government leaders have consistently and repeatedly weakened the intellectual property (IP) rights that underpin private sector investment in cancer research and development. Left unprotected by these detrimental actions, foreign competitors may be in a position to steal American intellectual property altogether.  

Most egregiously, Congress is further weakening intellectual property by restricting markets and threatening crippling financial penalties under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which will allow the government to set arbitrary prices on new medicines, including those targeting cancer.  

These policies cast a shadow of uncertainty over innovators, making it uneconomical to pursue and develop new medicines. Moreover, government price controls will dry up the investment needed to develop all the new drugs that are needed. A study by Vital Transformations shows that if the IRA had been implemented in 2014, between 24 and 49 available medications would never have reached the market, leaving patients without these essential treatments. The same research also indicates that the IRA may shelve the development of up to 139 new drugs in the coming decade. 

But the IRA isn’t just dictating the levels of innovation that patients can expect— it’s dictating which types of innovation companies should pursue. For example, the IRA establishes two different levels of protection for small molecule (generally a pill) and large molecule (IV or infusion) therapeutics, favoring large molecules. Companies have already voiced concerns that this imbalance could create a situation where patients with smaller cancer indications, such as mesothelioma and ovarian cancer, may have to wait years before seeing new treatments. 

International evidence strongly corroborates these alarming predictions for American patients. In OECD nations with price controls, the availability of new biopharmaceutical and oncology products has decreased, according to a recent study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Until recently, the U.S. outpaced international competitors by offering access to 80 percent of newly introduced global oncology products, while Europe only had access to 56 percent. Moreover, patients in several benchmark countries must often endure long waits for life-saving treatments, with wait times averaging 133 days in Germany and reaching up to 500 days in Spain. If the IRA drug pricing provisions — some of which have already been challenged in litigation brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other parties — are implemented, it will significantly impact the timely access to new products that U.S. patients currently benefit from. 

More limited access and fewer innovative medicines will ground the Cancer Moonshot. The Biden administration must recalibrate its actions to realize its intentions and reverse the harm that is being inflicted on the innovation ecosystem. It isn’t too late to eliminate the damaging provisions in the IRA so that life sciences companies can continue delivering on their past success and achieve the holy grail — to end cancer as we know it.  

Brad Watts is Vice President, Patents and Innovation Policy, at the Chamber’s Global Innovation Policy Center. Katie Mahoney is Vice President, Health Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.