Phila. Mom Fighting For Her Life Works With Cancer Moonshot Summit To Find Cure
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia was part of the first Cancer Moonshot Summit held at cancer centers around the country.
Thousands of cancer experts and patients from all 50 states took part in the Moonshot Summit. The mission is to speed up cancer research to find better treatments. For a Philadelphia mom who is fighting her life, a cure can't come soon enough.
41-year-old Melissa Kartasevich has gotten used to walking the halls at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. She has recurrent pancreatic cancer, and is in a clinical trial.
"This time I lost my hair, the medicine is just stronger in general," she said.
The chemo makes her sick and zaps strength, so Melissa isn't able to get out as much with her 9-year-old daughter.
"So it makes me sad that I can't do things with her sometimes, but I do the best I can."
Melissa was on a panel for a Cancer Moonshot summit, hosted locally by Fox Chase. Vice President Joe Biden is leading the mission, to advance cancer research.
"Some of the work you're doing is mind blowing," said VP Joe Biden.
Biden spoke from Washington to the summit that happened simultaneously at cancer centers around the country.
"It's great, I'm very excited because we need the research to be able to do more things with cancer especially pancreatic cancer where it's the only cancer with a single digit survival rate of 8 percent for 5 years."
The summit focused on research, and finding better ways to share information, along with how to get more people involved with clinical trials.
"We gonna make a breakthrough," said Dr. Igor Astsaturov. "We are destined to do that as long as we move faster and eliminate the barriers that slow down the progress."
The Vice President threatened to pull federal funding for cancer studies that fail to publicly disclose their results, and he called out drug companies for unnecessary price increases. These are all issues the Moonshot Project aims to fix.
Vice President Joe Biden called for "a decade's worth of progress in five years."
