WASHINGTON — At a national cancer summit Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden threatened to cut funds to medical research institutions that don’t report their clinical trial results in a timely manner.

“Under the law, it says you must report. If you don’t report, the law says you shouldn’t get funding,’’ Biden said, citing a STAT investigation that found widespread reporting lapses.

“I’m going to find out if it’s true’’ that the research centers aren’t reporting the results, Biden said — “and if it’s true, I’m going to cut funding. That’s a promise.’’

Biden’s remarks came at the start of a daylong cancer summit at Howard University, in which government officials, medical researchers, industry officials, patient advocates, and others gathered to discuss how to make faster progress in the fight against cancer.

Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, later told reporters that a proposed rule — soon to become a final rule — should help by giving the agency more “clout’’ to crack down on institutions, not just individual investigators, when clinical trial data isn’t reported.

“That final rule is close to appearing,’’ he said. When it does, “we can basically say to Harvard, ‘Sorry, we’re not giving you any dollars until this principal investigator who ran a clinical trial deposits the data.’?’’

He also said the Food and Drug Administration will have the ability to impose $10,000-a-day fines on companies it regulates if they don’t comply with the reporting law.

“We cannot optimally advance health care innovation — the discovery and development of new cures and therapies — without clinical trial transparency,’’ said Jennifer Miller, a New York University medical ethicist. “We need to learn from the lessons of the people who went before us,’’ for both positive results and failures.

At the summit, participants held closed-door workshops to discuss new ways to work together on issues like how to improve all levels of care for cancer patients, how to use data more effectively, and how to get more cancer patients to participate in clinical trials.

The national summit had a feel-good quality to it, with speakers praising Biden’s cancer effort and audience members sitting around tables with placards advertising the summit’s hashtag: “#CanServe.’’

But Biden became visibly angry at times as he talked about the breakdowns he has seen — including the lapses in clinical trial reporting, as well as the steep rises in the cost of cancer drugs. He said he had learned of one drug — which he didn’t identify — that started out at $26,000 a year, and is now $100,000 a year.

“Tell me, tell me, tell me — what is the justification for that?’’ Biden demanded.

“Quite frankly, we have to change the culture’’ that allows such rapid price increases, Biden said, calling the cost of some cancer drugs “astronomical.’’