Returning the Favor

I have a bit of news.

At the beginning of September I changed jobs, leaving behind 10 years working to enable genomics research in pharmaceutical & biotech drug discovery to join the new Informatics department at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dana-Farber is ranked as the fourth best cancer center in the US by US News and World Report (for my Seattle friends, the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, which includes the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is #7). I'm proud to have the opportunity to work at such a distinguished institution.

Those who followed my treatment story on this blog know that I was treated at Dana-Farber in 2013. You also know that I received excellent care and that I am very grateful to "the Fahbah" (as Bostonians call it). I joke that I'm returning to the scene of the crime, but really I'm there to return the favor: to do what I can to improve outcomes for future cancer patients.

I consider it quite an honor.

It's a very exciting time in cancer research. Normally progress in cancer treatment is slow and painfully incremental, with new treatments for difficult forms of the disease perhaps providing a few months of life beyond the previous best treatment. But in the past 15-20 years science has learned a great deal about the unbelievably complex human immune system; enough that in the past five years breakthroughs in "immuno-oncology" (using the immune system to fight cancer) have provided startling improvements in prognosis for some formerly deadly forms of the disease such as metastatic melanoma.

One of these breakthrough drugs put Jimmy Carter's cancer into complete remission.

So far these new treatments are only working in a few cancer types, and only in a fraction of patients with those forms. But the field is energized and hopeful that these gains can be expanded.

I was not looking for a new job - this one came and found me. The man who was my boss' boss for about seven years back in pharma was recruited to Dana-Farber to build a new department from a collection of existing groups plus new growth. This is a person I respect greatly for his intelligence, creativity and most of all his demonstrated leadership abilities. For him to reach out to me to come and join him was the biggest professional compliment I have ever received. So not only am I motivated to help patients; I'm also motivated to live up to that trust.

I'm finishing my seventh week tomorrow. At least once per week I have texted Wonderful Wife sometime in the middle of my busy day to tell her,

"I love my job. I made the right move."