Cancer Moonshot: Patents for Patients.

Every inventor in the cancer research field understands the importance of patent protection to advance their research objectives and to ultimately achieve the commercial availability of a new cancer treatment. Historically, the process of obtaining an issued patent has been long (well over 2 years) and expensive. Thankfully, the USPTO has a new pilot program: The Cancer Moonshot Initiative; this remarkably shortens the process so that obtaining an issued patent in less than 1year is possible, and there are no added fees to expedite the examination. Warning: the program expires December 31, 2018.