Azra Raza, author of The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last, oncologist and professor of medicine at Columbia University, and fellow 3QD editor, decided to speak to more than 20 leading cancer investigators and ask each of them the same five questions listed below. She videotaped the interviews and over the next months we will be posting them here one at a time each Monday. Please keep in mind that Azra and the rest of us at 3QD neither endorse nor oppose any of the answers given by the researchers as part of this project. Their views are their own. 1. We were treating AML with 7+3 in 1977. We are still doing the same. What is the best way forward to change it by 2028? 2. There are 3.5 million papers on cancer, 135,000 in 2017 alone. There is a staggering disconnect between great scientific insights and translation to improved therapy. What are we doing wrong? 3. The fact that children respond to the same treatment better than adults seems to suggest that the cancer biology is different and also that the host is different. Since most cancers increase with age, even having good therapy may not matter as the host is decrepit. Solution? 4. You have great knowledge and experience in the field. If you were given limitless resources to plan a cure for cancer, what will you do? 5. Offering patients with advanced stage non-curable cancer, palliative but toxic treatments is a service or disservice in the current therapeutic landscape?
Dr. Larry Norton, a breast oncologist, is well-known as a leader in the development of drug treatments for breast cancer. His research has established the importance of using sequential combinations of drugs — a strategy aimed to overcome different drug sensitivities among the cells in a tumor. He has served in leadership positions in several…
Dr Bruce Chabner has had immense experience in the discipline of cancer drug discovery and development. During his career at the National Cancer Institute, he worked as a Senior Investigator in the Laboratory of Chemical Pharmacology, Chief of the Clinical Pharmacology Branch, Director of the Clinical Oncology Program, and Director of the Division of Cancer…
Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee is a physician-scientist with a persistent scientific and clinical interest in acute myeloid leukemia, hematopoiesis, novel therapeutic drug development and cancer biology. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. He has published articles in Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, The New…
Dr. David Steensma specializes in care and research for myelodysplastic syndromes and leukemia. He and colleagues were the first to identify and understand the clinical implications of the clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP). He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Clinical Oncology responsible for the “Art of Oncology” section and has more…
Renata Pasqualini, is the Chief, Division of Cancer Biology, Department of Radiation Oncology at Rutgers Cancer Institute and Rutgers New Jersey Medical School having previously served as Associate Director for Translational Research and Chief of the Division of Molecular Medicine at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center. She has published more than 200…
Ellin Berman is a board-certified medical oncologist and hematologist with a clinical and research focus on new drug development in acute and chronic leukemias, including acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). As a member of the multidisciplinary Leukemia Disease Management Team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), she works closely with…
Dr. Seema A. Khan is Professor of Surgery in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, and the Bluhm Family Professor of Cancer Research. She is the Co-leader of the Women’s Cancer Research Program at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research focuses on applying biomarker knowledge to improve breast cancer risk…
Kanti R. Rai, MD, is professor of medicine at The Karches Center for Oncology Research, The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research; director of the Center for Oncology and Cell Biology, Long Island Jewish Medical Center; and professor of medicine and molecular medicine at Hofstra University Northwell School of Medicine. He has been involved in diagnosing…
Wadih Arap is the Director of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey at University Hospital and Chief, Division of Hematology/Oncology in the Department of Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. He has served on the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Counselors, several review boards for the National Institutes of Health and the…
Mohandas Narla, D.Sc. is Vice President for Research of New York Blood Center and has authored 340 peer-reviewed publications and 100 review articles and book chapters. His research focuses on red cell physiology and pathology; helping improve understanding of the molecular and structural basis for red cell membrane disorders, developing mechanistic insights into pathophysiology of…
Joseph R. Bertino, MD, is University Professor of medicine and pharmacology, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and has previously served as director of the Yale Cancer Center and chair of the Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. He is the author and co-author of more than 400 scientific publications and the founding editor…
Michael Caligiuri, a renowned physician-scientist is the President of City of Hope National Medical Center, and Deana and Steve Campbell Physician-in-Chief Distinguished Chair. He directed The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center for 14 years prior as well as being the chief executive officer of The James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute for 10…
Dr. Steven T. Rosen is the Provost, Chief Scientific Officer, Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Beckman Research Institute for the City of Hope. He also holds the Irell & Manella Cancer Center Director’s Distinguished Chair and is the current Chair of the Medical Science Committee of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Dr.…
Azra Raza, author of the forthcoming book The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last, oncologist and professor of medicine at Columbia University, and 3QD editor, decided to speak to 26 leading cancer investigators and ask each of them the same five questions listed below. She videotaped the interviews and over…