• Big Think Cancer

    The Past Decade of Cancer Research

    February 21, 2011

    Big Think Cancer

    Cancer is responsible for 1 out of 5 deaths in the U.S., second only to heart disease. According to the American Cancer Society, over one and a half million Americans were diagnosed with some form of cancer last year, and more than 560,000 died from the disease. While there have been promising advances in cancer research over the past few decades, a definitive cure has not been found. Nevertheless, a new era of cancer research is dawning.

    Leading scientists are now looking at ways to supplement existing treatments-including the procedure of cutting or burning out cancer with chemotherapy and radiation-with more precise, less harmful and ultimately more successful therapies and prevention.

    In this short video, Dr. Harold Varmus, Dr. Doug Schwartzentruber, Dr. Deborah Schrag, Dr. Lewis Cantley, Adam Pavlicek and host Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee discuss Dr. Varmus’s thought that the most exciting development of the past ten years is targeted therapies that actually work.

    Dr. Harold Varmus, Director of the National Cancer Institute

    Dr. Doug Schwartzentruber, a Surgical Oncologist at the Goshen Center for Cancer Care

    Dr. Deborah Schrag, a Medical Oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston

    Dr. Lewis Cantley, a Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard University

    James Christensen, Director of Oncology Translational Research at Pfizer

    Host: Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of the New York Times best seller ”The Emperor of All Maladies,” and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University

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  1. Boomer said:

    The past decade sure has seen some monumental advances.. I wonder, what the future will hold for cancer research? These roundtable discussions do a great job of facilitating the type of collaborate discourse that is integral to advances in the field. Nice job!

    on February 23, 2011 at 4:02 pm