He’s met with presidents and even the pope to discuss cancer research. But biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s plan to cure cancer by the year 2020 appears to have generated more hype than scientific progress.
Indeed, Soon-Shiong’s “Cancer MoonShot 2020” (not to be confused with the Obama administration’s Cancer Moonshot initiative) appears to be a marketing ploy to promote his cancer diagnostic tool, according to an investigation by STAT.
The newspaper reached its conclusions after it reviewed hours of video and dozens of scientific presentations, legal filings, press releases and clinical trial summaries, and asked independent scientists for an opinion. Although Soon-Shiong wouldn’t agree to an interview with the publication, a spokesperson released a statement that his moonshot initiative had remarkable progress in several areas.
“The clinical breakthroughs touted by Patrick Soon-Shiong are less than modest—they are the most minuscule and vague findings,” Vinay Prasad, M.D., a hematologist-oncologist at Oregon Health and Science University, told STAT.
Soon-Shiong launched his initiative with big biopharma companies, academics and oncologists the same week the federal moonshot effort was introduced. Although the initiatives are separate, the newspaper reports that then-Vice President Joe Biden reportedly asked the doctor for his thoughts on the project.
The doctor has since renamed his project Cancer Breakthroughs 2020. The new name may be the result of a lawsuit filed by the University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center, which has a trademark on the moonshot name. The federal government paid to license the name.
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In his announcement about the project last year, Soon-Shiong said the project would design, initiate and complete randomized clinical trials in cancer patients with cancer at all stages of disease in up to 20 tumor types in as many as 20,000 patients by the year 2020.