Fon Mathuros, Head of Media, Public Engagement, Tel.: +41 (0)79 201 0211; Email: fmathuro@weforum.org
· At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2016, US Vice-President Biden convened a panel of eminent scientists and technologists to discuss priorities for the American government’s initiative to cure cancer
· Better access to and analysis of data will speed up progress in developing effective cancer treatments through scientific breakthroughs in such fields as genetics and nanotechnology
· For more information about the Annual Meeting 2016, please visit www.weforum.org
Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 19 January 2016 – At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2016, US Vice-President Joe Biden convened a panel of eminent scientists, doctors and technologists to discuss the priorities for the American “moonshot” campaign to cure cancer that was launched by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address to the US Congress last week. “Our goal is to make a decade worth of advances in five years,” Biden told participants. “We are not looking for incremental changes; we are looking for quantum leaps,” he said.
“We are at an inflection point,” the vice-president remarked. “Research and therapies are on the cusp of incredible breakthroughs.” Tapping the “treasure trove” of data and information on cancer cases, research and treatments across a whole range of disciplines is vital to achieve significant progress in fighting the disease, said Biden, whom Obama placed in charge of the anti-cancer initiative. “We can speed up research advances and access to cures. We can do more if this information is widely shared. We are going to make sure of that. I promise you I can clear the way,” said Biden.
Experts at the table agreed that improving the access to data and the capacity to analyse and glean insights from the vast amounts of information are key to winning the battle against cancer. “We need data to be accessible to all who want to use it,” reckoned Francis S. Collins, Director of the US National Institutes of Health, USA. “We need to have data standards,” argued David B. Agus, Professor of Medicine and Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC) Center for Applied Molecular Medicine. “We don’t have data standards in how we collect and look at data,” he said. José Baselga, Physician-in-Chief and Chief Medical Officer at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in the US, noted that analysing data on cancer cell mutations is crucial, but much work has yet to be done. “In the computer science revolution, medicine has been left behind,” he noted.
“We need a dynamic big-data collection and deploy this as well as we can,” said 2009 Nobel Medicine Prize Laureate Elizabeth Blackburn, the new President of the Salk Institute at the University of California, San Francisco. “As cancer is evolving, we have to promote ways of sharing data among scientists,” she said. Healthcare in the US is based on “a broken medical records system,” observed Bill McDermott, Chief Executive Officer of software group SAP. “If we really take a patient-centric view of the world, healthcare can improve substantially. The problem is how we aggregate data so it is accessible.”
Panellists made other recommendations, calling for a focus on prevention and early detection and faster government approval of drug combinations for cancer treatment. The fight against cancer has to include all stakeholders, Collins stressed. “We need not to focus on the federal government. We need new partnerships. We need patient advocates right at the table.”
At the conclusion of the session, Biden proposed that the panel reconvene in the near future to discuss the big-data dimension of cancer research and treatment. “We may be able to change people’s lives,” he concluded.
Over 2,500 leaders from business, government, international organizations, civil society, academia, media and the arts are participating in the 46th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, from 20-23 January. Under the theme, “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, the programme comprises over 300 sessions, of which over 100 sessions will be webcast live.
Taking a formative role in shaping the discussion at the Annual Meeting 2016 as the Co-Chairs are: Mary Barra, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, General Motors, USA; Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Brussels; Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft Corporation, USA; Hiroaki Nakanishi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hitachi, Japan; Tidjane Thiam, Chief Executive Officer, Credit Suisse, Switzerland; and Amira Yahyaoui, Founder and Chair, Al Bawsala, Tunisia.
Notes to Editors
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