# Cure-focused prizes: pay for verified long-term cures, not for drugs

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-moon-cure-prizes/  
OnCo record `idea-moon-cure-prizes` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Governments and philanthropists commit large payments for whoever achieves a verified jump in ten-year cure rates for a specific cancer, however they do it.

## Summary

Drug incentives reward incremental progression-free survival in late-stage disease; nothing rewards curing. Prize and advance market commitment mechanisms have worked for vaccines and longitude. The proposal is a set of cure prizes, each defined as a verified increase in a specific cancer's five- or ten-year relapse-free survival in a defined population (for example, pancreatic adenocarcinoma stage II, glioblastoma, metastatic triple-negative breast cancer), funded by pooled public and philanthropic commitments, awarded on registry-verified population outcomes with pro-rata payments for partial progress and open licensing conditions.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Announced cure prizes redirect measurable private and academic investment toward curative-intent strategies (combinations, interception, cell therapy) in the named cancers within three years and produce at least one verified prize-level improvement within fifteen.
- Rationale: Investment follows expected payment; today's payment structure is indifferent to cure. Prizes pay only on success and let the market choose the route.
- Proposed test: Launch three prizes with an independent verification body using cancer registries; track investment flows and trial starts in the named cancers against matched controls.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: philanthropy

## Sources

- Cancer Grand Challenges: https://cancergrandchallenges.org/
- XPRIZE: https://www.xprize.org/

## Connected records

- cancers: [Glioma & glioblastoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/glioblastoma/), [Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/pancreatic/), [Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC)](https://onco.cc/cancers/tnbc/)
- bottlenecks: [Funding follows fashion, not burden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/), [Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-incentive-misalignment/)

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