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.

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

Once you close down your laboratory, you can't just rev it up again if you're able to finally get a grant.

HIV/AIDS from converted from a lethal disease into a chronic disease because basic scientists' fundamental research was done that illuminated aspects of that virus and allowed the generation of therapies like antiretroviral therapies. And so now HIV/AIDS is not a lethal disease, it is a chronic disease.

The key to HIV/AIDS was to say let's give a patient multiple different therapies at the same time and that makes the virus much less likely to mutate.

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.

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.