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.

The decrease in incidents of death from cancer is largely attributable to new medicines or therapeutics. Perhaps a third is attributable to changing our environment, and that includes of course smoking which I believe accounted for probably 20 percent of deaths from, certainly from lung cancer, more than that from lung cancer, but from cancer overall.

The four most common cancers that account for about 80 percent of all cancer deaths are lung, breast, colorectal cancer, and prostate cancer.

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.

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 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.