Cancer Moonshot

(Inside Science) -- An interview with Steven Kalkanis at Henry Ford Health System:

What is the cancer moonshot?

“So, the cancer moonshot is a wonderful motivation and impetus to get all researchers from around the globe focused on removing all types of barriers to advancement. I was very honored to represent Henry Ford at the White House with former Vice President Biden when he launched this, and specifically for brain tumors, the power of the moonshot is thinking about cancer treatment in a global crowdsourcing way.

“If a patient in Beijing or London or Argentina or Chicago or Los Angeles has a tumor, that genetic profile can be uploaded, and it's a real-time iteration so that the next patient that has that same profile will have the benefit of the experience of all of those patients that had a similar phenotype or genotype from around the world. And we will know if one drug that worked for one patient with that profile is appropriate to give to the next one. And all this does is basically take 10 or 20 years of research and hopefully compress it into a few years so that we have a better chance to find a cure, or at least a real advance in treatment much sooner than we otherwise would.

“So, I think the moonshot is meant to really share information and make data more accessible, so that practitioners and researchers around the world can collaborate better and get to an answer more quickly.”

[SkullyTheHypnoSkull]

A moonshot is a motivation to remove barriers? Why do you need a shot to be motivated to remove barriers, and what are the barriers?