Host Dr. Shushan Hovsepyan sits down with Dr. George Demetri, the director of the Sarcoma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, director of the Ludwig Center at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, executive director for Clinical and Translational Research at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, and global leader in sarcoma research and translational oncology.
Dr. Demetri talks about:
- His unconventional path into oncology
- Why sarcoma was once called the “backwater” of oncology and how that changed
- The fight to bring targeted therapy to GIST patients
- The behind-the-scenes story of pushing imatinib (Gleevec) forward despite resistance
- The real meaning of “precision medicine”
- The misconceptions surrounding translational research
- Fighting pharmaceutical skepticism to accelerate access for dying patients