DREAM TEAMS

Linda in her tiny apartment during PT school

The plaque on the wall probably read "Be of good courage: all this will soon be over"

Time magazine recently feature an article about the “Dream Team” approach to cancer research.  The topic of the article is something called SU2C, short for “Stand Up to Cancer”.  Apparently it is the brain child of several Hollywood celebs, somel of whom have personal experience of cancer.  SU2C employs a team approach to cancer research.  To quote the article, “attack cancer the way you make a movie: bring the most talented people together, fund them generously, oversee their progress rigorously, and shoot for big payoffs – on a tight schedule”   This is contrasted with research conducted by “narrowly focused investigators beavering away, one small grant at a time”.  Apparently ten groups have signed on to the SU2C approach, including the very well regarded MD Anderson Cancer Center. 

Dream Teams comprise “geneticists, pathologists, biostatisticians, biochemists, informaticists*, oncologists, surgeons and technicians”, all working together on a common problem. 

Sounds good, but I forsee problems.  For one thing, coordinating actions of such a disparate group is bound to be complicated.  Big egos, as well as big talents, will be involved.  I foresee battles over budgets, precedence, authorship, and even office space: who gets the corner lab with the big windows?  And, of course, nobody ever gave a Nobel Prize to a committee.  Also, this sounds a bit like the “War on Cancer” declared during the Nixon administration.  It was to be a team effort, lavishly funded, and its declared purpose was to rid the world of cancer, once and for all.  As we know all too well, it failed.  What it did do was to demonstrate just how complicated cancer is, and that a multi-pronged approach to the problem was essential.  Thus, I am hopeful for progress under the team approach, but I hope there will continue to be support for the lone scientist beavering away on some interesting problem of basic cancer biology. 

One thing about the team approach I really like: teams will be judged by patient outcomes, not by the number of papers published.

One of the approaches to be taken by these teams is “epigenetics”.  I have written about this before, with mystification.  The Time article gives a link to epigenetics which I may be able to understand.  If I do, I will let you know.

If you want to read the article yourself, the link is http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/21/cancer-dream-teams-road-to-a-cure/.

This blog was brought to you courtesy of Linda’s sister Carolyn, who has joined my army of poorly paid (but greatly appreciated) research assistants.

*I don’t know what these people do, either.  I Googled it, read several explanations – and I still don’t understand.  But I'm sure they do good work.