Nancy Goodman is founder and executive director of Kids v Cancer. Kids v Cancer promotes pediatric cancer research by identifying structural impediments at key junctures in the research process—new drugs, tissue donation and access to funding—and developing strategies to address them.
Through Kids v Cancer, Nancy championed the Creating Hope Act in 2012, which creates a market-based incentive to spur pediatric rare disease drug development. The Creating Hope Act was passed into law as USC 360ff. Since then, $1 billion in Creating Hope Act Priority Review Vouchers have traded with the last voucher trading at $350 million, providing a significant incentive for pediatric rare disease drug development.
Kids v Cancer is pressing for the RACE for Children Act to update the Pediatric Research Equity Act (PREA), which was designed to require companies to test drugs being developed for adults on kids, but which has been interpreted in a way that does not cover pediatric cancer. By updating PREA to require companies to share drugs that act upon the same markers as those active in pediatric cancers, we expect to open up vast new opportunities for pediatric cancer drug development.
Goodman founded Kids v Cancer after her son, Jacob Froman, died of medulloblastoma. Earlier in her career, she was an international trade lawyer. Goodman received her JD from the University of Chicago and her MPP from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.