The Research Evangelist

As I’ve previously written, the most useful biomarkers for predicting the efficacy of targeted therapy in advanced NSCLC are genomic alterations known as "driver mutations." These mutations occur in cancer cells within genes encoding for proteins critical to cell growth and survival. Through the use of molecular testing, the discovery of genetic mutations that drive NSCLC is rapidly improving the outlook for some patients in stage 4 disease. This is significant because almost 40% of lung cancer diagnoses are stage 4 patients. One of the first breakthroughs was the discovery of the EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) mutation, which is present in about 10 percent of patients who are diagnosed with lung cancer in the United States (interestingly more common in patients with adenocarcinomas and no prior history of smoking, as well as in women and those of Asian descent). I remember being at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conference in 2004 and the buzz s...

Vice President Joe Biden will be leaving office in 2 weeks. This has me thinking about what role he will play in the cancer community moving forward. I’ve been optimistic about increased cancer research funding and advances in targeted treatments since President Obama announced his Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) in early 2015, a research effort focusing on bringing precision medicine to many aspects of healthcare. The mission statement of the PMI is “To enable a new era of medicine through research, technology, and policies that empower patients, researchers and providers to work together toward development of individualized care”. In his budget for fiscal 2016 he included $216 million in funding for the initiative for the NIH, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the FDA.   I was even more enthusiastic when in his 2016 State of the Union, Obama called on Vice President Biden to lead a new, national “Moonshot” initiative to eliminate cancer as we know it. He launched...