Roy Herbst said there's "still an uphill climb" in the battle against cancer.
Speaking in his final State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama announced an ambitious challenge last week -- a call to cure cancer, as he put it, "once and for all."
It's called the national cancer "moonshot."
"I believe the idea is that in order to tackle a problem as difficult as cancer where so many people die each year, we need to work in a collaborative way with increased resources, and tackle a problem much like we did many years ago when we tried to send a man to the moon," said Yale Cancer Center oncologist Roy Herbst, speaking onWNPR'sWhere We Live.
Herbst said cancer is remarkably complex -- and that future battles against the disease will require advances in both basic research and personalized medicine.
"We have to, you know, have realistic expectations. Cancer is many diseases, many different sites of origin. Even within those sites there's a great deal of heterogeneity -- the cancers are very different," Herbst said. "But the goal being to take some of these cancers, at least, and to find ways to treat them so patients can live for long periods of time with good quality of life. We want to find drugs that are more specific, more laser guided, more personalized, so that they work better and they're less toxic."
Herbst said there's "still an uphill climb" in the battle against cancer. But he's hopeful the "moonshot" program will spur better understanding of cancer's genetics -- while inspiring new technologies used to more efficiently diagnose and treat the many aspects of the disease.
