(Bloomberg) -- A corporate-government partnership to improveU.S. veterans’ access to personalized cancer treatments will highlight anationwide series of gatherings and events Wednesday detailing ofVice President Joe Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot” program.

IBM Corp. will donate access to its“Watson” supercomputer -- best known for beating humanchampions on the television game show “Jeopardy!” -- to theU.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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The supercomputer will help provide facilitate oncologytreatment for those who have served in the U.S. military, accordingto a statement from the White House.

Biden’s program will kick into full gear with summits inWashington and around the country to promote coordination amongdrugmakers and government agencies. With just half a year left inPresident Barack Obama’s administration, it’s crucial to begin theprojects, said Greg Simon, executive director of the CancerMoonshot Task Force.

“Many things will take years to change,” he said on a phone callwith reporters. “The important thing is that we start and we makeit irreversible, so that we don’t fall back into business asusual.”

Shared research

As part of the program, drugmakers have committed to shareresearch to speed new oncology medications to market. Throughthe National Cancer Institute, as many as 30 companies will getfast access to drugs for study in combination with othermedications, or for uses other than those for which they haveapproval. Currently, getting permission to do such studies can takeas long as a year and a half, according to Biden’s office.

Some private foundations committed to double their investment incancer research over the next five years, including the AmericanCancer Society, which currently spends about $100 million per yearin grants for academic research institutions and as much as $20million annually on its own research, according to the statement.Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation will put $150 million towardchildhood cancer research, the White House said.

IBM’s “Watson” will help researchers conduct genomic analyses on10,000 veterans with cancer over the next two years. The hopeis that Watson can help replace time-intensive work normally doneby oncologists, allowing the VA to scale up its precision medicineprogram. About 3.5 percent of all American cancer patients areveterans eligible for treatment through the VA. The algorithm canuse past data to help pinpoint likely cancer-causing mutations andidentify treatments that target them.

Increased access

David Shulkin, undersecretary of health for the Department ofVeterans Affairs, said he was particularly excited that the programwould eventually open access to precision oncology to veterans whodid not live near the VA’s top cancer treatment facilities.

“This is really democratizing access to this expertise no matterwhere you live,” he said in a telephone interview.

Richard Pazdur, director of the FDA’s Office of Hematology andOncology Products, will serve as acting director of the agency’snew Oncology Center of Excellence, which is designed to uniteregulators’ expertise to review new cancer therapies. The AmericanCancer Society, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, andFriends of Cancer Research have pushed for the center’screation.

“This is an attempt to augment and enhance the existing system,”Pazdur said on the call.

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