In 2022, just five weeks after becoming the director of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Monica Bertagnolli had a mammogram—and found out she had cancer.
“I went through all my treatment, and I am fine,” said Bertagnolli, the former director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), onstage at the TIME100 Summit in New York City on April 23. That's because “every single bit of the treatment I got was supported, funded, and happened because of the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute.”
Bertagnolli was joined onstage at the Summit by two other leaders in the health industry: Dr. Anaeze C. Offodile II, chief strategy officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Tina Deignan, commercial president of Pfizer Oncology, which is a sponsor of the TIME100 Summit. Appearing on a panel moderated by Abby Phillip, anchor of CNN NewsNight, the three experts spoke about innovations in cancer treatment—and the importance of making sure as many people as possible have access to these medical advances.
Deignan, like Bertagnolli, shared a personal story about cancer: One of her colleagues experienced pain in her side and was later diagnosed with Stage III colon cancer. The colleague was in her late 30s—years before doctors typically recommend people get routine colonoscopies.
“She’s an example of this emerging face of cancer that's really quite challenging and quite alarming,” Deignan said. Researchers have found that more young people are getting cancer. But, Deignan also said: “We’ve made a lot of progress. We’re racing against cancer.”
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In many ways, cancer research has never been more promising, thanks to advances in technologies like AI. Personalized medicine is critical to innovations in cancer treatment, the experts agreed, which opens up a growing role for technology in treating patients, Offodile said. For instance, researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center have been using AI to identify the unique mutations associated with patients’ pancreatic cancer and then create mRNA vaccines targeted to that specific cancer.
“What we found is, for people who responded—so their body created a protein trigger after the vaccine—they had continuous survival three years out,” Offodile said. “Think about what that means for taking this pancreatic cancer [vaccine] to all the tough-to-treat cancers.”
While the experts spoke about the great strides researchers have made in understanding different cancers, there are growing challenges. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, mistrust in the health system and health institutions has proliferated. The best way to address this, Bertagnolli said, isn’t through a public relations campaign or experts lecturing people about what they should do. Rather, experts must engage with community members and ask them what they need.
“We build trust human being to human being,” Bertagnolli said. “One of the things I am particularly passionate about is our public funding and our public health system getting into every single community. Every community is different; every person is different.”
The panelists all emphasized the importance of equity in the health industry—even as the Trump Administration targets diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. While Bertagnolli acknowledged the challenges facing the nation’s health system right now, she insisted that the NIH and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “is here for everybody.”
“I’m not afraid of the word equity because that’s what equity means,” she said. “It means everybody.”
Addressing health inequities is key to improving health on a broad scale. Black women are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer later than their white counterparts, Deignan said, and 20% of rural Americans live more than 60 miles away from an oncologist, which can make it hard for them to access care.
“Bringing innovative medicines doesn’t matter unless we can actually get the medicines into the hands of patients that need them most,” Deignan said. “Our focus is trying to reach all patients, and we also know we can’t do that on our own—but we work in partnership across the community to do so.”
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The TIME100 Summit convenes leaders from the global TIME100 community to spotlight solutions and encourage action toward a better world. This year’s summit features a variety of speakers across a diverse range of sectors, including business, health and science, AI, culture, and more.
Speakers for the 2025 TIME100 Summit include human rights advocate Yulia Navalnaya; Meghan, Duchess of Sussex; comedian Nikki Glaser; climate justice activist Catherine Colman Flowers; Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, and many more, plus a performance by Nicole Scherzinger.
The 2025 TIME100 Summit was presented by Booking.com, Circle, Diriyah Company, Prudential Financial, Toyota, Amazon, Absolut, Pfizer, and XPRIZE.