US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday, September 30, 2025, to bolster the use of AI and provide an additional 450 million in research that will be focusing on finding cures for pediatric cancer.
The order builds on the National Cancer Institute’s Childhood Cancer Data Initiative, a 10-year, $500 million program, announced by Trump during his 2019 State of the Union address focused on gathering and sharing data on pediatric cancers.
According to the officials, the funding will help in collecting and sharing medical data on childhood cancers to use AI for improved diagnoses and speed up clinical trials.
While speaking at the Oval Office, Donald Trump said, “We’re going to hook up the artificial intelligence with all of the other things that we have at hand. And we’re going (to) come for answers, and these young children who are just really, some are absolutely better and others are getting better.”
According to the figures released by the WHO, some 400,000 children from infants to age 19 are diagnosed with cancer each year globally.
During a briefing, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, provided numbers of pediatric cancers.
He said, “Pediatric cancer remains the leading cause of chronic disease-related deaths for children in the United States, and its incidence has increased by more than 40% since 1975.”
Despite being relatively rare, cancer is the cause of disease-related death after infancy among children in the United States.
About 9,550 children in the US will be diagnosed with cancer in 2025, as estimated by the American Cancer Society.
Although survival rates have increased substantially, with pediatric cancer mortality dropping by more than 50 percent since 1975, new cases have risen steadily since the 1970s.
Trump’s executive order increases National Institute of Health's funding for pediatric cancer research to $100 million, despite his administration’s overall cuts to science funding.
The Trump administration has recently removed hundreds of scientists from federal roles and cancelled grants worth several hundred million dollars, including some focused on pediatric cancer studies.