Learning from Patients: Inspiration and Insights

For oncologist Bert Vogelstein, it was Melissa. For neurologist Huda Zoghbi, it was Ashley. These young patients—a four-year-old with leukemia and a two-year-old with Rett syndrome—led Vogelstein and Zoghbi to devote their energies to combating human disease. But patients do more than inspire researchers. They provide scientists with insights that guide them toward new methods for diagnosing, preventing, and treating these disorders. And by cooperating with researchers like Zoghbi and Vogelstein, patients advance our understanding of fundamental human biology. Read on...

The Evolution of Cancer

Cancers grow and spread by a process akin to evolution. A cancer cell accumulates mutations, each of which can give the cell a growth advantage over its neighbors. Read on...

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Understanding Cancer Diversity

The human body operates, in essence, like a large, multicellular society. Within this tight-knit community, trillions of cells, organized into hundreds of different tissues, collaborate for the good of the whole organism. Some cells convert food into energy, some transport oxygen or nutrients throughout the body, some fight infections, and some shuttle the organism's genes into the next generation. Read on...

Lab Work … and Play

Morning in the molecular oncology lab: The students and postdoctoral fellows make their way to the conference room, where they help themselves to bagels and doughnuts, cereal and fruit, coffee, tea, and shrimp cocktail. “Harith brings the shrimp cocktail,” says postdoc Nishant Agrawal, poking fun at one of his colleagues in the laboratory, which is run by senior scientists Bert Vogelstein and Ken Kinzler. Read on...