Vice President Joe Biden: Beginning Cancer “Moonshot” at Penn Medicine |
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January 26, 2016, Volume 62, No. 20 |
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Penn President Amy Gutmann, with the Vice President of the United States Joe Biden and NIH Director Francis Collins at the January 15 formal launch for the Cancer “Moonshot” Project. |
Days after President Obama announced the “moonshot” to find a cancer cure during his State of the Union address, Vice President Joe Biden visited Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center (ACC) to kick off the national effort he said aims to “accelerate the progress already underway”—much of which is happening right here. He chose Penn because of the cutting-edge work in immunotherapy being done. This national effort invokes the aspirations of President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 goal of sending an American to the moon, which was accomplished by Apollo 11 astronauts on July 20, 1969.
“You’re on the cusp of some breakthroughs,” Vice President Biden said. “In my terms—not your medical terms—we are at an inflection point in the fight against cancer.”
Immunotherapy pioneer Carl June, director of Translational Research at the ACC, and Bruce Levine, director of Penn’s Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility, took the Vice President on a tour of the research hub that will serve as the epicenter of its pioneering personalized T-cell therapy program. Afterwards, Mr. Biden led a roundtable discussion with Penn experts in immunotherapy, cancer prevention, surgery, genomics and more, as well as ACC director Chi Van Dang. Mr. Biden was also joined by University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis S. Collins. The 2016 NIH budget that funds basic research needed for these advancements had a modest increase as compared to a decade of declining funding.
“I’d like you to educate me,” Mr. Biden said to the group. “I’d like you to talk about what you think I should most be doing as I put this task force together.”
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Emily Whitehead and her parents, Tom and Kari, enjoying the event at Penn where they shared her story as the first child in the world to receive an experimental T-cell therapy. She has been in remission since 2012. |
A flurry of clinical successes and endeavors from the Penn doctors followed: cancer vaccine trials, immunotherapies, big data, precision medicine, cancer recurrence and early chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy clinical trials for aggressive brain cancer. Emily Whitehead, the 10-year-old girl who is now cancer free after receiving CAR therapy three years ago to treat her acute lymphoblastic leukemia, was also in attendance with her parents.
While researchers have made significant headway in the fight, the field is not without its challenges, the room agreed. “Cancer politics,” Mr. Biden said, are keeping people in their respective corners. Data sharing needs to not only continue but expand and silos at and among academic medical centers and drug companies need to be broken down, he said, in order to speed up progress. This year also finds the National Cancer Institute with its biggest budget increase in 10 years, but Mr. Biden stressed that more support from the private and public sector and philanthropists is essential to get us closer to cures and better treatments for the host of cancers diagnosed every day—some, he recognized, more complex and deadly than others. This initiative aims to harness every research facility, academic institution, pharmaceutical corporation and many federal agencies to aim for finding a cure for cancer.
“My commitment is not for the next 12 months,” Mr. Biden told the crowd, which also included elected officials and some 40 members of the press. “I’ve been stunned by the overwhelming response of welcoming me, to ask me to be the facilitator and convener….I plan on doing this the rest of my life.” He stressed that the initiative is not about a top down, centralized program but that he hopes to be a catalyst.
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