How can we improve upon cancer research?
Cancer research findings can be used for patient benefit within a year or two, says David Abramson, MD, chief of the Ophthalmic Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In this video, he explains how.
Transcript
DAVID ABRAMSON: It's challenging because you don't want to do something that hurts patients. At the same time, you want to see the fruits of your result
in your lifetime and in that patient's lifetime. [RELAXING MUSIC]
Cancer research is a little bit like mining gold. You have to go through a tremendous amount
to find that little nugget. It would be wonderful if you knew where the gold was and you didn't have to spend weeks and months mining tons of material to come up
with a few fragments. But that's been difficult in cancer because we don't know the answer, and therefore, we don't know exactly how to go about it.
I think one of the things that's happened in cancer is that people recognize that they want to try to do things now that specifically relate
to patients that are so-called translatable, that their findings can be used in patients
within a year or two, not 20 or 30 years of finding research. And I think cancer and the NIH have dedicated themselves
to this approach. It's challenging because you don't want to do something that hurts patients. At the same time, you want to see the fruits of your result
in your lifetime and in that patient's lifetime. So I think directing it more specifically
to try to help patients with small or large steps is important. I also think it's important that people in cancer
learn what other people in cancer are doing. We tend to become experts in our small field
but not necessarily keep up on what's going on in other fields of cancer or in other subspecialties or specialties.
That's one of the things I enjoy about being at Memorial Sloan Kettering the most. I know what I'm doing and can let people know,
but every day, I'm reminded by people of what they're doing in breast cancer, and lung cancer, and bladder cancer, and skin cancer.
And some of those things, we've been able to use directly into our cancer. So we didn't do any research at all,
we simply learned what is already out there. I think that kind of sharing knowledge is very difficult in medicine.
People are busy or challenged. And I'm fortunate to be in an environment where it's teaching me every day.
cancer
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