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.

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.

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.

Precision medicine is one way to attack cancer and it's proven to be very effective but, remember that like HIV/AIDS, you're going to need combination therapies.

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.

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.

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.