Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill brought their initiative to find a cure for cancer to communities across the country Wednesday, including at the March's Life Tribute Center in Randallstown.
People from all walks of life gathered at the community summit to share their experiences and ideas about how to drive the new national effort to find a cure for cancer, known as The Cancer Moonshot Initiative. The effort was started by the White House last year after Biden's son, Beau, died from cancer. Some 270 similar summits were held around the country.
Biden headlined a summit at Howard University and held a national video conference with all the participants.
He announced new partnerships between government, academia, and industry focused on strengthening the "cancer moonshot" plan.
The Energy Department and the National Cancer Institute said it was launching a new program to analyze cancer data with supercomputers, and another computing program teaming up with drug maker GlaxoSmithKline to speed up drug development. IBM unveiled plans to donate its Watson supercomputing technology to help Veterans Affairs ramp up its precision medicine program by sequencing the genomics of tumors for 10,000 patients over two years.
The Randallstown event was hosted by Jeri Lacks-Whye, whose grandmother Henrietta Lacks' cancer cells were used by Johns Hopkins Medicine doctors to conduct years of research without her family's knowledge or permission.
"Our grandmother's story is a platform for us to tackle issues like this," Lacks-Wye said.
Biden's head of domestic policy, Don Graves, attended the Randallstown event and spoke about the importance of the Moonshot initiative.
Graves, a cancer survivor and the point man on the moonshot initiative, emphasized the importance of researchers sharing data. He said people don't have to be scientists to support the effort and that anybody can play a part by donating to research, sharing their genomic data, and preventing cancer by living a healthy lifestyle.
"Cancer is in everybody's lives and we have to go after it," Graves said.
The vice president's eldest son died last year at age 46 from brain cancer. The vice president has made it a personal mission to push efforts to find a cure. He says progress can be moved up from a decade to five years.
But the conference comes as time is running out to make good on his pledge to double the rate of progress toward a cure before leaving office. Biden had hoped to dramatically boost government activity on cancer, but his campaign has run up against the same political and logistical obstacles that have challenged other White House priorities.
To fund Biden's effort, President Barack Obama asked Congress for $1 billion over two budget years for research. Only a fraction has been approved. So Biden's focus has shifted to trying to highlight and streamline private and nonprofit research efforts.
Those attending the Randallstown conference welcomed the vice president's cancer initiative.
"It is great that we can be involved and share our ideas," said Valerie Fraling, a 66-year-old Randallstown resident and social security analyst. "Most things like this are out of our reach."
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
amcdaniels@baltsun.com