Joe Biden ASCO 2016On June 29th, LRG Executive Director, Norman Scherzer, will be attending Vice President Joe Biden’s “National Moonshot Summit,” at Howard University.

A “by invitation only” event, the summit is designed to bring together scientists, oncologists, donors and patients for a national conference on cancer research. The one-day conference is intended to ramp up Biden’s push to double the pace of cancer research.

The conference will be the first of its kind to focus on more than 100 types of cancer. It is also the first cancer summit sponsored by the government, and backed by the federal task force that President Obama established in January, 2016.

Greg Simon, the head of the initiative, views it as an opportunity to prioritize strategies for prevention, early detection, access to treatment and collaborative research.

Simon said that as a result of Biden’s initiative the National Cancer Institute is working closely with pharmaceutical companies to make more drugs available in clinical trials that test combination treatments. The FDA will open a new center to review combination treatments more efficiently, and Biden’s team is working to design the website that lists clinical trials so patients can more easily identify options.

It is our intention to bring the Life Raft Group members’ ideas and concerns to the summit. Have an idea?
Email Mary Garland: mgarland@liferaftgroup.org