2 USC scientists called to serve on Biden’s renewed Cancer Moonshot initiative

President Joe Biden on Wednesday called together a team of experts — including two USC cancer scientists — to reignite a national research effort, Cancer Moonshot, with the aim of reducing the national death rate from the disease by 50% over the next 25 years.

The USC researchers at the White House meeting were cancer physicist Peter Kuhn, Dean’s Professor of Biological Sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and John Carpten, who directs the Institute of Translational Genomics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and who was selected to chair the Biden administration’s National Cancer Advisory Board.

Kuhn, who directs the Convergent Science Institute in Cancer at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, isn’t new to the White House; he visited in 2016 as part of then-Vice President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot exhibit.

Both Kuhn and Carpten bring considerable experience to the effort toward fighting cancer, which has a broad range of goals such as accelerating scientific discovery in cancer and greater collaboration. The initiative also aims to assist families coping with cancer.

Kuhn is also professor of medicine at Keck School of Medicine and professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering at USC Viterbi School of Engineering.