When we think about lung cancer, the biggest environmental factor is without doubt smoking. Um, that would make a huge impact and has made a huge impact on the incidence of lung cancer. We have to keep pushing that and making it clear to everybody why smoking is so dangerous.

Cancer can no longer be classified according to the organ in which it arises. It has to be characterized in terms of the genetic mutation that exists.

There are clearly environmental factors that can decrease the incidence and death from cancer. I would still say though that the majority of cancers cannot be prevented at this point, but they can be treated and they can be treated two major ways.

Probably all of us have random rogue cancer cells floating around in our bodies but by and large, in the majority of cases, our immune system circulates and acts as a surveillance mechanism and kills off those few tumor cells.

Precision medicine is diving into the DNA with a knowledge that everybody's tumor has a unique genetic profile and you want to be able to identify that specific piece of DNA that has become mutated and that is driving cancer growth.

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.