Two weeks ago, President Joe Biden announced $150 million in new cancer research funding as part of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Cancer Moonshot program. As a physician-researcher at Stanford and a lung cancer patient, I am both happy and sad to hear this news. I am happy, because I am always glad to see new funding going toward improving our ability to prevent and treat cancer. But I am also very sad, because $150 million is a microscopic amount of money in the world of medical research. It is not enough.

This past May, I was diagnosed with stage IV non-smoker lung cancer after several weeks of a nagging cough. It was a harrowing experience: for months, I was coughing, losing weight and eventually even had to be admitted to my own hospital to get 1.8 liters of fluid drained from my collapsed right lung. The cancer had spread to my bones, liver and brain, and even caused lumps under my skin.  

My experience is not unique. More than half of lung cancers are diagnosed when it has already spread beyond the lung as most patients, like myself, do not have symptoms until the cancer has become advanced. Across the country, it is much the same: the American Cancer Society estimates that in 2024, nearly 2 million people in the US will be diagnosed with cancer and over 600,000 will die from it.

Still, there is great — yet conditional — hope on the horizon. I believe that were it not for the NCI’s Cancer Moonshot, I would not be enjoying the high quality of life that I do today. In fact, I am a living example of how new medical treatments, bolstered by robust research, have drastically revolutionized cancer care. 

Started during the Obama administration and led by then-Vice President Joe Biden, whose son Beau died of brain cancer at 46, Cancer Moonshot has funded $1.8 billion in new cancer research since 2016. With prior and new funding, cancer death rates have dropped a dramatic 27% between 2001 and 2020, an astonishing improvement that has been driven by research of and training to produce smoking cessation, vaccines for hepatitis B and human papilloma virus, improved cancer screening and new cancer treatments.

Among those new treatments is Tagrisso, a simple pill that I take daily with mild side effects. One of the latest drugs in a class of cancer medications developed, in part, through NCI funding, it has extended the survival of many patients, including myself, by months and even many years. With chemotherapy and the miracle of targeted therapy, my cancer has now shrunk and only one of the 50 cancer spots in my brain are still visible.  

While tremendous strides have been made, we cannot afford to lose focus. To meet Cancer Moonshot’s new ambitious goal of cutting cancer deaths by 50% by 2047, the U.S. will have to almost double the rate of improvement of cancer mortality compared to the prior 20 years. Yet with a total appropriation this year of just $7.22 billion, the NCI’s research buying power is $1.1 billion less than in 2003.

This means the U.S. government is supporting less research in cancer at a time when, according to a recent study published in JAMA Network Open, developing one oncology drug costs over $1.1 billion. The budget for the actual NASA moonshot, to send humans back to the moon, is $7.8 billion. As a further point of comparison, we spend over 20 times more on defense research than we do on cancer research.  

A paltry $150 million is not nearly enough. Cancer Moonshot will be effectively ineffective without a massive allocation of money. To halve the cancer mortality rate, the president and Congress should be doubling NCI funding, not effectively cutting it.  

I am so grateful to be the direct beneficiary of the technological advancements in lung cancer treatment. Though my cancer is not considered curable, I value every extra day I have to spend with my family and the opportunity to see my sons grow into young men.  

When I was first diagnosed, one of my medical school classmates connected me to a pulmonologist whose lung cancer is in remission. He advised me to think about cancer as a chronic disease, one in which I will just have to survive until the next miracle treatment comes out. I hope cancer funding will become a bipartisan priority of the next Congress and president so that I and millions of others can continue to live and thrive.

Bryant Lin is a clinical professor at the School of Medicine.