When you think of the costs of cancer care, one can imagine that drugs like checkpoint blockers or transfer of these T lymphocytes are actually cost-saving, just as treatments for hepatitis C, while expensive, overall save money by preventing hepatitis and hep - hepatocarcinoma in patients.

I like to think of making cancer a chronic disease rather than focus just on curing cancer.

Hepatitis C was a devastating disease but because fundamental research was done in hepatitis C, it is now curable. It is now absolutely curable with new medications. So this is transformative.

Cancer vaccines are in the future. And they could be very effective. Checkpoint blockade, which is acting your immune system to recognize those cancer cells and kill them is another very promising approach and there have been some checkpoint blockade drugs out in the market now that will release the brake on T lymphocytes, the T lymphocyte is your major killer of tumor cells.

The biggest risk factor for cancer is aging.

I think that the marriage of academic medical centers and academicians with the private sector is a very, is a marriage made in heaven because it's the best way to get basic discoveries from the laboratory into new therapeutics for our patients.

I think there's a lack of understanding which is partly our fault as scientists and physicians in not communicating well enough with the public. But there's a lack of understanding of how important biomedical research is.