Eminent cancer physician-scientist joins Virginia Tech to lead research in Washington, D.C.

I think the opportunity to build something to do better in cancer research is really motivating. For me, it's clear we're not doing well enough in the way we look after people who are dealing with cancer. I think the opportunity was to take a innovative approach here in the nation's capital, we're bringing in diverse teams who can work collaboratively, focused on impact in cancer research. Out of every five Americans, two will get cancer and one of those two will die of cancer On a global scale, we're talking about 10 million deaths a year from cancer. On an economic scale, over the next 30 years, we're talking about $25,000,000,000,000 cost to the burden of cancer. I think there's also this sense of innovation and engineering, and getting teams to work on across disciplines on really hard problems. Cancer is a hard problem and is a major focus of our research efforts, but we're not doing enough. And I think the Virginia Tech approach of working across disciplines on these difficult challenges can really help us try a new way of making progress here. So I think we're in an exciting era where the advances we've seen in the scientific laboratory finally being translated to better therapeutics and better diagnostics, and really being implemented in clinical care. But the reality is, I'm trying to put us out of business. My goal is I don't want there to be a need for cancer research anymore. And whether that's in my lifetime or the lifetimes of those individuals I train, that's our ultimate objective, is not to have an industry of cancer research. It's really to address the problem of cancer in humanity. I'm Christopher Horrigan. I'm the Director of the Cancer Research Center of Washington DC, who's part of the Frayling Biomedical Research Institute of Virginia Tech.