NEW ORLEANS — Vice President Biden called on the nation’s leading cancer researchers to accelerate progress in the fight against the disease by sharply boosting collaborations and data sharing and by giving him advice on how to make the federal government a forceful ally in the anti-cancer effort.

“I have the authority to do everything I can to put the federal government in a position where it’s total value-added and it doesn’t get in your way,” the vice president told thousands of scientists gathered at the annual conference of the American Association for Cancer Research. “But you have to tell me how.”