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The National Institutes of Health on Thursday announced a $215 million public-private partnership with 11 pharmaceutical companies in what the agency bills as a significant next step in its cancer moonshot. The Partnership for Accelerating Cancer Therapies, or PACT, is a five-year agreement to push ahead with research that seeks to “identify, develop and validate robust biomarkers — standardized biological markers of disease and treatment response — to advance new immunotherapy treatments that harness the immune system to attack cancer,” the agency said. (Facher, 10/12)

A new public-private research collaboration launched Thursday in an effort to increase the number of therapies aimed at attacking cancer. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is partnering with 11 biopharmaceutical companies to form the Partnership for Accelerating Cancer Therapies (PACT), a five-year, $215 million initiative. It’s part of the Cancer Moonshot, an effort pushed by former Vice President Joe Biden after he lost his son to brain cancer in 2015. (Roubein, 10/12)

But the children who develop these rare tumors in their retinas have never benefited from that wave of precision diagnostics and therapies. That’s largely because doctors haven’t been able to biopsy the tumors for genetic information that could guide treatment, without removing the very eyes clinicians are trying so hard to save. Now, because a young oncologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles followed a hunch, there may be a safe, non-invasive way to biopsy retinoblastoma tumors — using fluid that’s removed from the eye during chemotherapy and typically discarded. A small study published Thursday in JAMA Ophthalmology showed that DNA found in the fluid matched the DNA found in tumors — a discovery that could lead to a new liquid biopsy. (McFarling, 10/12)

In other news, the Los Angeles Times examines some issues around cancer —

If you can’t beat ’em, manage ’em. Millions of patients live by that rule every day — patients with chronic conditions that can’t be cured but can be kept under control with the right combination of medication, diet and lifestyle choices. (Ravn, 10/12)

We all want to avoid cancer. That’s a given. But when cancer risk seems to lurk everywhere, it’s hard to know what you really need to do to protect yourself. The stakes are high. As many as 40% of cancer cases, and about half of all cancer deaths, could be prevented with a healthy lifestyle, according to a study by Harvard researchers published in the journal JAMA Oncology. (Woolston, 10/12)

Bin McLaurin was lucky. Doctors detected his prostate cancer early, and he successfully completed the surgery, radiation and hormone therapy he needed to keep the disease at bay. But two years out from his 2014 diagnosis, McLaurin didn't feel so great. He had gained 60 pounds during treatment, and the hormones he was taking sapped his energy and drive. (Brown, 10/12)

Cancer screening could save your life. Then again, it could give you a false alarm or lull you into a false sense of security. Screening is a science, but it’s not an exact science. “Sometimes people think it’s better than it actually is,” says Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society. (Ravn, 10/12)