by (LR) Abby Phillip, Tina Degnan, Anaeze Offodile and Monica Bertagnolli on stage during the Time100 summit 2025 in Jazz in the Lincoln Center on April 23, 2025 in New York City. Credit – Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for the time
IN 2022, just five weeks after the director of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Monica Bertagnolli A mammography – and found that she had cancer.
“I have gone through my entire treatment and I am fine,” said BertagNolli, the former director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), on April 23 on the stage on stage.
BertagNolli was accompanied by two other managers in the health industry on the stage on the summit: Dr. Anaeze C. Offodile II, Chief Strategy Officer of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Tina Deglan, commercial president of Pfizer Oncology, who is sponsor of TIME100 Summit. The three experts were adopted in a panel moderated by Abby Phillip, anchor from CNN Newsnight, about innovations in cancer treatment – and the importance of the seized bodies that as many people as possible have access to these medical advances.
Deignan like Bertagnolli told a personal story about cancer: one of her colleagues had pain in her side and was later diagnosed with colon cancer at stage III. The colleague was in late 30th anniversary before doctors usually recommend that people receive routine colonoscopies.
“It is an example of this aspiring cancer face that is really challenging and alarming,” said Deigelan. Researchers have found that more young people get cancer. Deignan also said: “We made a lot of progress. We run against cancer.”
Read more: What to expect with colonoscopy
In many ways, cancer research has never been more promising thanks to progress in technologies such as AI. Personalized medicine is of crucial importance for innovations in cancer treatment, the experts agreed, which opens up a growing role in the treatment of patients, said Offodiles. For example, researchers from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Ai have used to identify the unique mutations associated with the patient’s pancreatic cancer and then generate mRNA vaccines that aim at this specific cancer.
“What we have found is for people who reacted – so that their body created a protein trigger after the vaccine – they had continuous survival for three years,” said Offodiles. “Think about what this means to bring this pancreatic cancer to all types of cancer to be treated.”
While the experts about the great strides that researchers made when understanding different types of cancer, there are growing challenges. After the Covid 19 pandemic, distrust of the health system and health institutions has increased. The best way to fix this is, said BertagNolli, a PR campaign or experts who teach people about what to do. Rather, experts have to deal with community members and ask them what they need.
“We build human trust,” said BertagNolli. “One of the things I am particularly passionate about is our public financing and our public health system in every single community. Every community is different; everyone is different.”
The discussion participants all emphasized how important justice in the health industry is – even as the Trump administration against diversity, justice and inclusion. While Bustagnolli recognized the challenges for the nation’s health system, it insisted that the NIH and the US Ministry of Health and Human Services are “for everyone”.
“I’m not afraid of the word equity because it is justice,” she said. “It all means.”
Combating health documents is the key to improving health on a wide scale. In black women, breast cancer is more often diagnosed after their white colleagues, according to Deignan, and 20% of rural Americans live more than 60 miles away from an oncologist, which can make it difficult for them to access care.
“Bringing innovative medicinal products does not matter unless we can put the medication into the hands of patients who need the most urgently,” said Deigan. “Our focus is on trying to reach all patients and we also know that we cannot do it alone – but we work together in the entire community.”
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The TIME100 summit calls executives from the global time 100 community to find solutions and promote actions for a better world. This year’s Summit offers a variety of speakers in a variety of industries, including business, health and science, AI, culture and much more.
The talkers Yulia Navalnaya are among the speakers in 2025; Meghan, Duchess of Sussex; Comedian Nikki Glaser; Activist of the climate justice Catherine Colman Flowers; Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos and many more as well as a performance by Nicole Scherzinger.
The 2025 Time100 Summit was introduced by Booking.com, Circle, Diriyah Company, Prudential Financial, Toyota, Amazon, Absolut, Pfizer and Xprise.
Contact us at letters@time.com.
