Some mentions of MSK in the news lately;
- MSK’s Joan Massagué, and Irving L. Weissman of Stanford University, were awarded the Charles Rodolphe Brupbacher Prize for their contributions to cancer research. The prizes (each worth CHF 100,000) were presented at the “Breakthroughs in Cancer Research and Therapy” symposium in Zurich.
- In a study published January 27, MSK’s Dr. Michael Zelefsky and colleagues determined that the likelihood of surviving prostate cancer for 10 recurrence-free years was 66.4 % among patients who had never smoked, 62.6 % for former smokers, and only 52.4 % among patients who were current smokers.
- In a JAMA Dermatology paper, MSK’s Xinyuan Wu and co-authors reported on their study that showed it is feasible and effective to monitor patients’ moles via teledermoscopy over a short-term period.
- In an HIT Consultant post on February 2 announcing President Obama’s $215 Precision Medicine Initiative, MSK’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. José Baselga, was quoted saying: “We can mine the genome of tumors from our patients, identify mutations responsible for the tumors and accelerate improvements in patient care.”
- In a NYTimes article on the same hot topic that day, MSK’s Dr. Charles Sawyers explained how precision medicine is already having a great impact in cancer and how support for more widespread tumor gene sequencing will likely lead to a better understanding of cancer gene mutations and more targeted drug therapies being developed.