The Cancer History Project

When Robert Mayer started his career in pancreatic cancer research in the 1960s, the treatment landscape of pancreatic cancer was dismal. “We had no tools, say like CT scans, to even identify or diagnose these tumors at an early time,” said Mayer. “Colonoscopy was a big deal. Making a diagnosis of a pancreatic cancer often was restricted to the presence of metastatic disease because there was no s...

“Backwater to Blockbuster,” the first de novo book published by the Cancer History Project, traces the evolution of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to its current status of a powerhouse of research in pediatric cancer. In a conversation moderated by Deborah Doroshow, the book’s co-authors Charles J. Sherr and William E. Evans discuss how their book project began, their collaborative writing...

Olufunmilayo “Funmi” Olopade, director for the Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics and Global Health at the University of Chicago, credits her Nigerian upbringing for her focus on global cancer genetics. “My Yoruba culture really worships our ancestors and the people before us,” Olopade said on the Cancer History Project podcast. “And so that's why I was able to really say, ‘Okay, let's la...

When Bernie Lewinsky was a young radiotherapy resident, he studied under some of the most storied names in the field. Now, over fifty years later, he marvels at how much radiation oncology has changed.  “You've gone from a betatron, cobalt and radium needles, and treating AP one day and PA the next, to probably treating on some sort of amazing [technology like a] TrueBeam or Elekta,” said Stac...

To date, Michael P. Link has the unique honor of being the only pediatric oncologist to have served as president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.  Link, who is the Lydia J. Lee Professor in Pediatric Oncology at Stanford University, appeared on the Cancer History Project Podcast in conversation with Paul Goldberg, co-editor of the Cancer History Project and editor and publisher of The...

As an oncology nurse practitioner at NCI’s Clinical Center and wife of FDA’s Richard Pazdur, Mary Pazdur knew cancer drug development inside and out. When she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she and Rick got to know “the other side of the stethoscope.”  In his 25 year career at FDA, Rick has shaped the FDA approach to drug approval, setting forth a set of criteria accepted by drug companies, ac...

Melvin J. Silverstein, now Medical Director of Hoag Breast Center and the Gross Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Oncoplastic Breast Surgery at USC, sat down with Stacy Wentworth, radiation oncologist and medical historian, to reflect on his career. Silverstein founded the Van Nuys Breast Center in 1979. As he saw more and more and more patients with what was only recently coming to be known as d...

This interview with Walter Lawrence Jr. was conducted in 2020, when Lawrence was 95 years old and director emeritus of VCU Massey Cancer Center. Lawrence died one year later, on Nov. 9, 2021. Lawrence was one of the founders of the field of surgical oncology, setting up the first-ever university-based division of surgical oncology at what later became VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, in Ric...

In this episode, Susan Ellenberg, emerita professor of biostatistics, medical ethics, and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, describes her lifelong love of mathematics, how she accidentally became a biostatistician, and her well-rounded career in clinical trial design and analysis. As a child, Ellenberg was fascinated by a mathematical puzzle. John is twic...

To mark Hispanic Heritage Month, in this episode, six cancer experts discuss Latino representation in clinical trials, translational research, and healthcare professions. Hispanic and Latino people comprise nearly 20% of the U.S. population , but less than 6% of physicians nationwide identify as Hispanic. “The pipeline issue continues to be a huge issue for us,” said Amelie Ramirez, of UT Health S...

In this episode, Lawrence Phillips, an endocrinologist at Emory Clinic, a professor at Emory University School of Medicine, and medical director of the Clinical Studies Center at the Atlanta VA Medical Center, discusses pushing through lung cancer to continue doing what he loves—seeing patients, teaching, and conducting research. Something odd turned up in one of Phillips’s routine health screenin...

In this episode, stay-at-home mom Christy Erickson discusses how she went from a roundabout lung cancer diagnosis to riding a motorcycle and competing in strongman competitions. Erickson wasn’t worried about lung cancer when she was younger. Breast cancer had a stronghold on her family tree. Her mom died from it when Erickson was seven years old. She took preventative measures for breast cancer, i...

In this episode, 2024 David Karnofsky Memorial Award winner Lillian L. Siu reviews her career developing novel therapies in the phase I setting, the evolution of her field, and her mentor’s dreaded “evil red pencil.” Siu was among the first scientists to read out the signals of safety, pharmacology, and preliminary efficacy of therapeutic agents that ushered in a new era of cancer therapy. She has...

Something felt wrong during one of Morhaf Al Achkar’s regular runs on the treadmill in late 2016. He started gasping for breath. “It became really hard to run,” he said. “That sudden development of shortness of breath alarmed me.” Being a family physician in Indiana at the time, he asked a resident at the clinic where he worked to listen to his lungs. “There’s no air moving on the left side of you...

When Stephanie Graff was a breast oncology fellow in 2010, one of her patients brought a marked up copy of “Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book” to an appointment. “One of my patients had brought it in and was using it almost as her cancer notebook, and had pages flagged and said, ’Well, what about this? What about this? It says here…,’” Graff, director of Breast Oncology at Lifespan Cancer Institute and...

Soon after he was diagnosed with a dedifferentiated liposarcoma, C. Norman Coleman reached out to The Cancer Letter and the Cancer History Project to initiate a series of interviews about his life and career. The plan was to keep going for as long as possible. Alas, only one interview–about an hour’s worth–got done. Coleman spoke with Otis Brawley and Paul Goldberg, co-editors of the Cancer Histor...

In this conversation, Vivian Pinn speaks with Robert Winn, guest editor of The Cancer Letter and the Cancer History Project during Black History Month, about the obstacles she faced as a medical student, how she incidentally helped integrate restaurants in Charlottesville in the 1960s, and her beginnings as a Research Fellow in Immunopathology at NIH. Pinn was the only African American and the onl...

In this conversation, Roderick Pettigrew speaks with Robert Winn, guest editor of The Cancer Letter and the Cancer History Project during Black History Month, about Pettigrew’s contributions to research, how he became an early self-taught expert on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or the MRI, as well as when he became founding director of National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineer...

As part of a series as a guest editor of the Cancer History Project to commemorate the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health, Alan Blum speaks with Louis Sullivan, who was Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1989 to 1993. Alan Blum is professor and Gerald Leon Wallace M.D. Endowed Chair in Family Medicine at the University of Alabama, as well as the dir...

In 1964, the Office of the Surgeon General issued a report on smoking and health that ended a debate that had raged for decades—stating that cigarettes cause lung cancer and other diseases. Sixty years later, Alan Blum, professor and Gerald Leon Wallace M.D. Endowed Chair in Family Medicine at the University of Alabama, as well as the director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, si...

George Santos, founder of Johns Hopkins University Bone Marrow Transplantation Program, pioneered many of the innovations used in bone marrow transplantation that are relevant today—but he didn’t get nearly as much credit as others working in the field. Richard J. Jones, professor of oncology and medicine, director of the Bone Marrow Transplantation Program, and co-director, Hematologic Malignanci...

In this episode, Judith L. Pearson, best-selling author and founder of A 2nd Act, speaks with Alexandria Carolan, associate editor with the Cancer History Project. Delving deep into Mary Lasker’s role as the “catalytic agent” who worked behind the scenes through proxies to accomplish the goal of curing cancer, Pearson wrote “ Crusade to Heal America: The Remarkable Life of Mary Lasker .” “She just...

At age 18, during basic training in Fort Polk, Louisiana, Chris Lundy slipped and broke his wrist. At the hospital, the doctors set his wrist and ran some blood tests. What Lundy thought would be a simple visit turned into a series of months-long hospital stays. Lundy was diagnosed with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, and his doctors sent him to Seattle, where he would become a patient of Don...

What does it take to run an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center for 22 years? And what does it takes to recruit a successor? In this episode, Shelton “Shelley” Earp talks about his plans to step down as director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center effective in June 2024. He is joined by Norman "Ned" Sharpless, former director of UNC Lineberger as well as former NCI d...

John Laszlo, professor emeritus at Duke University Medical Center and former national vice president for research at the American Cancer Society, speaks with the Cancer History Project’s Alex Carolan and Paul Goldberg about his life, career, and his authoritative book, “The Cure of Childhood Leukemia: Into the Age of Miracles.” When Laszlo, 92, joined the Acute Leukemia Service at NCI in 1956, the...