Johnson Recognizes Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and pediatric cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease for children. The mental and physical trauma that accompanies pediatric cancer extends to an ever-growing number of children, families, and communities. According to the World Health Organization, 400,000 children are diagnosed with cancer every year around the globe.  

In part to address pediatric and other forms of cancer, NASA has joined the team of government departments and agencies to combat cancer on multiple fronts. On July 13, 2022, NASA was named a member of the Cancer Cabinet for the White House’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative, which launched in 2016 and was reinstated in February 2022 with new priority actions.

NASA’s participation in the Cancer Moonshot encourages hope and contributes to the president’s vision to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50% in the next 25 years, improve the experience of people and their families living with and surviving cancer, and end cancer as we know it today.

Mark Weyland, whose duty station is NASA’s Johnson Space Center, has been working with health and medical professionals most of his career. He was a natural fit to serve in the Office of the Chief Health and Medical Officer at Headquarters and lead NASA’s contributions to the Cancer Moonshot Cabinet.

“There are five Cancer Moonshot priority actions,” Weyland said. “Close the screening gap, understand and address environmental and toxic exposures, decrease the impact of preventable cancers, drive innovation from discovery to patients, and improve the experience for patients and caregivers.”

The Cancer Moonshot Cabinet’s five focus areas of work seek to drive progress through independent agency initiatives and cross-agency collaborations.  

“There are a lot of people across the agency who are already doing cancer research for different reasons, so now I am gathering ideas, platforms, and research across the agency that would be beneficial,” Weyland said.

Platforms Weyland noted as examples are:
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• NASA Ames Research Center’s advanced supercomputing capabilities
• The International Space Station’s unique microgravity environment used to conduct research investigations like the Protein Crystal Growth-5 study, which produced high-quality crystalline suspensions that could make possible delivery of the cancer drug Keytruda® by injection, not only making treatment more convenient for patients and caregivers, but also significantly reducing cost
• Brookhaven National Laboratory and their joint lab with NASA (the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory) that just recently signed an agreement with the National Cancer Institute to research carbon therapy
• The Space Radiation Element of NASA's Human Research Program that is exploring how new technologies like tissue chips and induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, will support individualized cancer risk assessments and direct personalized screenings for early cancer detection

As NASA contributes on the scientific front, we as part of the NASA community have had the opportunity to offer hope and raise awareness during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Johnson Chief Information Officer Lauren Goodwin, who has personal experience with pediatric cancer, notes, “Childhood cancer awareness is important to me, as those most vulnerable need hope. NASA is the essence of hope. I’m proud of NASA for being a forcing function to prioritize more awareness, research, and hope for all those affected by cancer.”