Washington, DC ― David Nather reports on STAT News that the U.S. Department of Energy says it may have found a fast way to find new tactics for treating cancer:
Supercomputers.
The powerful technology, based at 17 national laboratories around the country, will be the department’s contribution to Vice President Joe Biden’s cancer initiative, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz wrote in a Medium post on June 15.
The goal: find patterns in the data on cancer patients to understand the disease better, and accelerate the search for new treatments.
“Supercomputers are key to the Cancer Moonshot,” Moniz wrote, because they can “greatly accelerate the development of cancer therapies by finding patterns in massive data sets too large for human analysis.”
Supercomputers.
The powerful technology, based at 17 national laboratories around the country, will be the department’s contribution to Vice President Joe Biden’s cancer initiative, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz wrote in a Medium post on June 15.
The goal: find patterns in the data on cancer patients to understand the disease better, and accelerate the search for new treatments.
“Supercomputers are key to the Cancer Moonshot,” Moniz wrote, because they can “greatly accelerate the development of cancer therapies by finding patterns in massive data sets too large for human analysis.”
The announcement came ahead of a Wednesday meeting of Biden’s cancer task force, which is coordinating the efforts of federal departments and agencies that will have a hand in his bid to double the rate of progress against cancer over the next five years.
The agencies are preparing for the national summit Biden will host for the cancer initiative on June 29, when researchers, cancer survivors, federal officials, and others will gather in Washington to build momentum for the effort.
Supercomputers can help, Moniz wrote: “The challenge is not a lack of relevant data — we have more than ever before. The challenge is accessing that data, and processing it to find patterns that tell us something about what causes cancer, or how to fight it more effectively.”
For Nather’s full story, click here.
Follow Nather on Twitter @DavidNather.
Follow STAT — which reports from the frontiers of health and medicine — on Twitter @statnews.
The agencies are preparing for the national summit Biden will host for the cancer initiative on June 29, when researchers, cancer survivors, federal officials, and others will gather in Washington to build momentum for the effort.
Supercomputers can help, Moniz wrote: “The challenge is not a lack of relevant data — we have more than ever before. The challenge is accessing that data, and processing it to find patterns that tell us something about what causes cancer, or how to fight it more effectively.”
For Nather’s full story, click here.
Follow Nather on Twitter @DavidNather.
Follow STAT — which reports from the frontiers of health and medicine — on Twitter @statnews.
