Closing The Gap Now

After 40 years and $300 billion spent on the “War on Cancer” cancer survivorship has doubled – yet the gap between hope and cures for million of people with cancer is growing. The number of new approved treatments has stalled, while the length and cost of clinical trials has grown so that many recently approved therapies may be priced beyond the reach of most patients. And, for many painful and deadly cancers, there are no clinical trials underway or planned. The great recent advances in the understanding of genetics, the immune system and stem cells should have induced an explosion of new ideas and new cures. And yet, so far, they have not. To this end, the Closing the Gap Now symposium brings together internationally recognized experts from academia, industry, government and health insurance to consider how to create such revolutionary change in drug discovery and access. We will examine both the advantages and potential hazards of rapid open access for both patients and data. And we will discuss how advances in genomics, Big Data and cloud computing can help us reimagine the speed, scale and scope of medical innovation to cure cancer and give people with the fewest options and the deadliest cancers access to therapies in months instead of years. The conference is just the beginning of what will be a multi-year effort to promote faster development and access supported by the conference sponsors.