Extended Interview: Dr. Lee Hartwell Discusses Cancer Biomarker Research

SUSAN DENTZER:

Thanks so much for talking with us. I mentioned to you we interviewed this woman yesterday, Kathy Lilleman. Diagnosed in in 2004 with stage three ovarian cancer. Two large tumors removed from her ovaries. Complete hysterectomy. On and off chemotherapy since. In your view, what is she an example of?

LEE HARTWELL:

Well it's an example of detecting cancer at a late stage. And what is really impressive– perhaps the most important statistic we know about cancer, is that if you detect it at an early stage, then standard treatments usually surgery and radiation will cure the disease. But if the disease is detected late– it's very– unusual to cure the disease.

SUSAN DENTZER:

We have, just as of this morning, the new statistics announced by the American cancer society showing that cancer mortality again dropped last year as it has been dropping for a number of years. What should that tell us about our success in treating cancer so far?

LEE HARTWELL:

Well the drop in mortality from cancer is primarily due to reduced smoking. So it's prevention. And that's the best of all worlds, if we can prevent cancer. Which involves identifying its causes.

But in the absence of that, and for many cancers we don't really know what the causes are. Then I think the next best thing we can do is to detect the cancer early when it can be cured.

SUSAN DENTZER:

You gave a speech at ASCO going on three years ago that caused quite a hubbub. If you could just Paraphrase for us briefly what you said at that point and what point you were making about where we need to put our resources going forward in cancer research.

LEE HARTWELL:

Well the model for how to cure this disease has been to try to make drugs that will kill the cancer cells but not normal cells. And tens of billions of dollars are spent every year by pharmaceutical companies and a good deal by academic research trying to find drugs that will cure late stage cancer.

And to a large extent, that has been a failure. There are a few good drugs. We can count them on one hand. And hopefully there will be many more. But it has not solved the problem. The mortality from cancer is not, although it has decreased a small amount, not very different than it was 30 years ago.

And the probability that a person who gets cancer will die of their disease has changed modesty. It was about 50 percent in the '70s. And it's about 36 percent now, the chance that a person will die of their disease within five years. So we have a long ways to go. And the point I made at ASCO was that there is a new opportunity to really implement a program to detect cancers earlier when we know they're curable.