Cancer and Genetic Science: [Sponsored Post]
The field of genomics may revolutionize how we understand and treat cancer. One research scientist explains why. Charles Swanton - T. Rowe Price Connections contributor Charles Swanton is the head of Translational Cancer Therapeutics at the London Research Institute of Cancer Research UK. He specializes in "translational research"-focused on using discoveries in drug resistance to develop new ways to treat cancer. His current research involves chromosomal instability in breast cancer tumors. Over the past two decades, dramatic progress has been made in many areas of medicine where hope once seemed out of reach. An infectious disease like HIV, considered intractable in the 1990s, is now controllable with anti-retroviral therapy; and the right combination of antibiotics can similarly control many difficult bacterial infections. When it comes to cancer, however, progress in managing solid tumors that have spread beyond their primary site (metastatic disease) has been rather limited. Survival gains from new therapies...