Mitchel Berger, MD, and Jeff Bluestone, PhD, have been named to a Blue Ribbon Panel of scientific experts, cancer leaders and patient advocates that will help to guide the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
The UC San Francisco faculty members will help to inform the scientific direction and goals of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), for the initiative.
“This Blue Ribbon Panel will ensure that, as NIH allocates new resources through the Moonshot, decisions will be grounded in the best science,” said Vice President Joe Biden, who is leading the national initiative. “I look forward to working with this panel and many others involved with the Moonshot to make unprecedented improvements in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer.”
The appointments to the Blue Ribbon Panel are UCSF’s latest involvement in the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, PhD, visited UCSF on Feb. 27 as part of a national “listening tour” they launched to better understand the state of cancer research and care. In March, Chancellor Sam Hawgood, MBBS, and other top UCSF leaders met with the vice president’s staff in Washington, D.C., to follow up on a number of issues the vice president raised during his campus visit.
Berger and Bluestone now will help to deepen UCSF’s role in the Cancer Moonshot by serving on the panel that over the next several months will consider how to advance the themes that have been proposed for the initiative. The two bring strong research and clinical knowledge to the panel.