Philip A. Salem, MD, Director Emeritus of Cancer Research at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, Houston, was born and reared in Bterram, a village that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. “I had the most beautiful and blessed childhood, as I lived in a household dominated by a father who believed in the...
In this installment of The ASCO Post ’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Naoto T. Ueno, MD, PhD, FACP, Director of the University of Hawaii Cancer Center. Along with his duties leading the cancer center, Dr. Ueno leads translational breast cancer research...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Nina Shah, MD, Global Head of Multiple Myeloma Clinical Development and Strategy, Hematology, Oncology Research and Development at AstraZeneca. She is a hematologist who specializes in...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Dennis J. Slamon, MD, PhD, one of the principals in the discovery and development of trastuzumab—the first monoclonal antibody used against an oncogene that altered our entire approach...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Elisabete Weiderpass, MD, MSc, PhD, a Brazilian cancer researcher who is a naturalized Swedish and Finnish citizen. She is an expert in cancer epidemiology and cancer prevention. In...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Seema A. Khan, MD, MPH, Professor of Breast Cancer Surgery at Northwestern Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine. Along with her surgical and academic pursuits, Dr. Khan is an active...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, the Jerald L. & Carolynn J. Varner Professor of Surgical Oncology & Global Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, spoke with Héber Salvador, MD, PhD,...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Gil Morgan, MD, a clinical oncologist formerly at the Division of Medical and Radiation Oncology at Skåne University Hospital, Lund, Sweden and now full-time Director of the OncoAlert...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Benjamin Besse, MD, PhD, Professor of Medical Oncology at Paris-Saclay University, Orsay, France, and lung cancer specialist at Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus, Villejuif. Currently, Dr....
Nicholas Petrelli, MD, FACS, Bank of America Endowed Medical Director of ChristianaCare’s Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute in Newark, Delaware, has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. Dr. Petrelli is a 1973...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with neurosurgeon Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, MD, FAANS, FACS, the James C. and Sarah K. Kennedy Dean of Research, Monica Flynn Jacoby Chair of Neurologic Surgery, and William J. and Charles...
Elizabeth M. Jaffee, MD, Deputy Director of The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Baltimore, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in a place and time she found exhilarating during her early years. “We didn’t have a lot of money—actually, we were poor. But I had a lot of freedom walking around...
In the era of genomics and precision medicine, the role of pathology in diagnosis and cancer management is rapidly evolving. For the past 50 years, from her office at the Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute (NCI), pathologist Elaine S. Jaffe, MD, has been at the forefront of that...
According to Sunil R. Hingorani, MD, PhD, his parents figured heavily on who he became as a person and on his career choices, which ultimately led to his current position as Director of the Pancreatic Cancer Center of Excellence at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, Omaha. “My father...
Jonathan W. Friedberg, MD, MMSc, Director of the James P. Wilmot Cancer Institute, grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee. While his school friends were attending camp, he spent his summers working on the family farm. “Perhaps the hardest work I’ve ever done was haying on a hot, humid night in July,...
Don S. Dizon, MD, FACP, FASCO, Director of Pelvic Malignancies Program at Lifespan Cancer Institute and Director of Medical Oncology at Rhode Island Hospital was born and reared in Guam. He also is Professor of Medicine and Professor of Surgery at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. “I am...
George D. Demetri, MD, FASCO, Director of the Sarcoma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Professor of Medicine and Co-Director of the Ludwig Center at Harvard, was born in Hyde Park, a town along the Hudson River in New York. When Dr. Demetri was growing up there, it was known for three...
In December 2019, Robert A. Winn, MD, became the second Black physician to lead a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated comprehensive cancer center when he took the helm of the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Massey Cancer Center. Dr. Winn’s basic science research, which has been...
Caroline Robert, MD, PhD, Head of the Dermatology Unit at Gustave Roussy and Co-Director of the Melanoma Research Unit at INSERM 981 Paris-Sud University, was born and reared in Paris. “I didn’t have a vocation for medicine when I was a kid; I wanted to be an archeologist. I’m not from a medical...
Today is the era of the multidisciplinary oncology care approach, cancer staging facilitates precision in documenting disease extent, all of which improved the quality of patient care. However, in the United States, the Rai staging system is still the most commonly used clinical staging system for...
Manali Patel, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine (Oncology) at Stanford University, grew up in Shelby, a small town in the textile and farming community of Western North Carolina, among mill workers and other blue-collar laborers. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Dr. Patel’s early life was...
Susan K. Parsons, MD, MRP, Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine and Founding Director of the Reid R. Sacco Adolescent and Young Adult Program for Cancer and Hereditary Blood Disorders at Tufts Medical Center, grew up on a working dairy farm in Sharon Springs,...
For this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Sibylle Loibl, MD, PhD, Chair of the German Breast Group (GBG) and Chief Executive Officer of the GBG Forschungs GmbH. Professor Loibl, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology ...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Dov Zippel, MD, a surgical oncologist at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Israel, where he is Head of the Meirav Breast Center. Dr. Zippel is the current President of ...
In this installment of our Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Kelly M. McMasters, MD, PhD, who, for the past 27 years, has directed a basic and translational science lab studying adenovirus-mediated cancer gene therapy and melanoma biomarkers....
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Vivek Subbiah, MD, Center Clinical Medical Director of the Clinical Center for Targeted Therapy, Cancer Medicine Division, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, ...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Kristin Flowers, MD, a general surgeon at Tanana Valley Clinic at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital in rural Alaska. Dr. Flowers’ surgical areas of interest include treating...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD, FACP, FRACP, FASCO, Founding President of the Levine Cancer Institute. Established in 2011, the Levine Cancer Institute is part of Atrium Health (formerly the...
Lymphoma expert Jeremy S. Abramson, MD, was born in Westchester County, New York, but soon after, his family relocated to Bergen County, New Jersey, where he spent his formative years. “I attended Tenafly High School and had dual passions: one was the natural sciences and the other on the...
For this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Laurie Glimcher, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). She is also Director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, Principal...
Breast cancer specialist Brittany L. Bychkovsky, MD, MSc, grew up primarily in Kansas; however, given that her father was a pilot, her childhood was not wholly centered in the Sunflower State. “When I was 12 years old, my mom, who was a schoolteacher, was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. Her ...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with C.S. Pramesh, MS, FRCS, Director of the Tata Memorial Hospital and Professor and Head of Thoracic Surgery at the Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, India. Dr. Pramesh is the Convener of the...
Myeloma expert Sarah A. Holstein, MD, PhD, was born and reared in Iowa City, a college town in eastern Iowa along the banks of the Iowa River. “The town itself is small, but it doubles in population when all the college students are present. Both my parents had a PhD in humanities, so I had no...
In 2000, the da Vinci Surgical System broke new ground by becoming the first robotic surgery system approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for general laparoscopic surgery. In its early years, robot-assisted radical prostatectomy was characterized by some in the surgical community as an...
For anacademic oncologist, there is no greater reward than to be part of the clinical research that turns a fatal cancer into a highly treatable disease. Saul A. Rosenberg, MD, FASCO, was one such researcher who pioneered advances in the diagnosis, treatment, and understanding of lymphoma,...
In 2019, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II appointed V. Craig Jordan, CMG, OBE, PhD, DSc, FMedSci, Companion of the Most Distinguished order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG), honoring his extraordinary scientific work in the development of selective estrogen receptor modulators, most notably...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Ahmad Bashir Barekzai, MD, FACS, Consultant Surgical Oncologist at Ali Abad Teaching Hospital, an affiliated hospital to Kabul University of Medical Science, Kabul,...
In this installment of Living a Full Life, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with Manmeet S. Ahluwalia, MD, MBA, Deputy Director, Chief Scientific Officer, and Chief of Solid Tumor Medical Oncology at Miami Cancer Institute, where his research focuses on the development of new therapies for...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Kevin Billingsley, MD, MBA, FACS, Chief Medical Officer of the Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center. Although interracial marriage is common in the United States...
In this installment of Living a Full Life, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Ariela L. Marshall, MD, Director, Women’s Hemostasis and Thrombosis Program at Penn Medicine. Along with her clinical and research activities, Dr. Marshall is also an advocate for women’s health and equity in ...
On a cool, gray November morning, I took the call from a walk-in doctor about Carla, a 26-year-old woman with progressive lymphadenopathy who was refusing investigations because of severe needle phobia. Carla was willing to meet with me to discuss treatment options for a suspected diagnosis of...
Michael Silbermann, DMD, PhD, was born on January 19, 1935, in the old quarter of Acre, a northern Arab city stretching along the north end of the Bay of Haifa in present-day Israel. “Acre, which was developed more than 4,000 years ago, was one of the primary harbors of the Phoenician people....
Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, Executive Vice President of Policy and Strategic Initiatives for Texas Oncology, was reared in Plano, Texas, a city in the sprawling Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. “My father was an electrical engineer with a PhD, and all throughout my childhood, I was exposed to the wonders ...
Community practices have long been a keystone of our nation’s oncology care delivery system by allowing patients with cancer to receive specialized treatment near their homes and places of business. Innovative clinicians in the community setting are also leading efforts to create a more efficient...
ASCO Past President, Michael Link, MD, who has pioneered new strategies for treating common childhood cancers, was born and reared in a suburb of Cleveland. “My first significant exposure to medicine was my own family doctor, Dr. J.W. Epstein. Looking back, I was impressed by the combination of...
According to internationally regarded neuroendocrine tumor specialist, Pamela Kunz, MD, her career path was kickstarted by childhood bat-hunting expeditions in barns and caves throughout rural New England. “My father was an environmental biologist at Boston University who studied bats. Although at...
Success in tennis demands precision timing, extraordinary hand-eye dexterity, and commanding mental and physical vigor. According to Harold P. Freeman, MD, the discipline and skills he learned on the tennis courts at an early age stood him in good stead during his remarkable life’s journey. “My...
"The reality is that closure is a myth. My personal and professional experience with those who have lost friends and family, including children, has taught me that going on with life is not the same as gaining closure. The wound of loss is a part of each person’s life forever,” wrote...
It is safe to assume that most oncologists take a fairly straight career path, beginning with the decision to become a doctor. Along the educational journey from medical school to fellowship, an event or mentor usually incites the passion to pursue the challenging field of oncology. Although Fumiko ...
According to research in the literature, adults with cancer generate high rates of emergency department visits, leading to hospitalization roughly 60% of the time—nearly four times the rate of the general population. Although many of these visits could be prevented, this phenomenon offers numerable ...