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Biden Community Cancer Summit unites physicians, advocates fighting for ‘urgency of now’
Jill Biden, PhD, along with several physicians and patient advocates, gathered at a Biden Community Cancer Summit today in Philadelphia to discuss the revolution in cancer treatment and the continuing barriers to care.
Former Vice President Joe Biden also spoke via livestream from Washington. His remarks focused on disparities in care, as well as concerns about costs and access.
“Today, we’ve taken on these challenges and so much more, and we’ve done it as a united community,” Joe Biden said. “It’s going to take all of us to deliver hope to millions of patients around the world. Together, we can make significant progress. Together, we can make hope real.”
Several Biden Community Cancer Summit events took place around the country today. All were organized as part of the Biden Cancer Initiative, a nonprofit organization that grew out of the National Cancer Moonshot to foster comprehensive and cohesive strategies related to cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment and research.
During the community summit in Philadelphia, Jill Biden spoke about the progress made so far, as well as the work that remains.
“The cancer death rate has fallen 26% from its peak in 1991, yet — as you all know — progress is uneven,” she said. “Rural, black, Latino and Native American communities all see far less positive cancer outcomes.
“Poverty draws a line between surviving and succumbing to this disease,” she added. “[Although] earlier diagnosis, precision medicine and immunotherapy have revolutionized the treatment of certain diseases, many cancers still remain as deadly as ever.”
Companies such as Lyft and Airbnb today pledged their commitment to helping people affected by cancer by providing free services to patients and their caregivers who face barriers to care.
The summit also brought together leading researchers.
Edith Mitchell, MD, director of the Center to Eliminate Cancer Disparities at Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health, spoke about her work addressing cancer disparities as part of the Cancer Moonshot.
“We did not want to develop a research plan for one group of major individuals and another research plan for minorities and others. We insisted and actually developed that understanding disparities would be weaved throughout the fabric of the Cancer Moonshot,” Mitchell said. “So, it’s in the genomic profiling and in the prevention area.”
Former President Barack Obama announced the launch of the Cancer Moonshot during his State of the Union address in January 2016. Obama selected Joe Biden — whose son, Beau, died of glioblastoma multiforme the prior summer — to lead the effort for the duration of his presidency.
That work is continuing through the Biden Cancer Initiative.
“It’s about time we created the kind of cancer support network that Americans deserve,” Jill Biden said. “It’s about time we gave the fierce, relentless, courageous survivors a chance to share their victories. It’s about time we said, ‘Not one more mother, not one more grandfather, not one more son.’ It’s about time. This is the urgency of now. And together, we will fight for the most precious thing we all have: time.”
The American Association for Cancer Research, the world’s largest professional association related to cancer research, co-hosted today’s event in Philadelphia.
Dario Altieri, MD, president and CEO of The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, spoke about the importance of funding that research.
“Sometimes we hear the talk that research is expensive [or] we have other priorities, but I would argue that if you consider the cost of research with the cost of treating diseases, there is no comparison,” Altieri said.
Stephan Grupp, MD, PhD, director of translational research at the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, spoke to the crowd about the dramatic advances in chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.
“[CAR T-cells] go after the cancer cell wherever it lives in the body. They are very targeted,” Grupp said. “The nice thing about it is that you’re really going after the bad cell, and you don’t have the same issue as you do with chemotherapy where there are lots of cells in the body that actually take a hit.”
Other researchers and cancer survivors and patient advocates spoke about prevention, advocacy and the true impact of cancer. – by Cassie Homer