Lecturing

One of the ways I'm trying to make this year's Winterim different from last year's is by talking to Dr. Willey about what's going on in the field as much as I can. I came in roughly 45 minutes earlier than the other lab workers so that I could have him teach me.

First of all, I would like to say that Dr. Willey is a one of a kind man. He's extremely busy for this month, but he still came in early to talk with me. When you talk to him in his office, it's slightly intimidating because he's so poised and intelligent, but he attempts to make things informal as possible. He doesn't act arrogantly towards me even though I pale in comparison in terms of knowledge and experience. Doctor Willey is the kind of sincere professional I hope to become no matter what career path I choose.

So he started lecturing me about the "future of medicine". When I say lectured, it wasn't a boring monotone info session, it was more like a conversation between us. Even though we both knew the basics of cancer, he started with the basic knowledge of cancer before moving to the more advanced ideas. I had remembered that all cancers started as one cell who's regulatory functions get turned off, but he told me something very interesting: all cancers are different. The old idea was that each cancer in the body was just the same thing growing at different places and rates. Instead, they've now realized that each cancer is caused by disrupting different groups of  genes in a each cell for every person. Naturally should mean that every cancer (therefore person) should be treated with a completely different treatment regiment, but that would be way to costly to make/use. What people are now trying to develop are Biomarkers that could tell which type of pathways had been mutated in cancer cells;then, they could use medicines that they know are effective in dealing with cancers caused by a mutation in a specific group of genes. This would save lives and cut costs. Needless to say, I found this a very compelling notion.

Sadly Dr. Willey had to scurry on to a patient, but he assure me that we could meet other times. I'm looking forward to being taught by him again next Monday morning.