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Dr. Jesse Bloom shared context amidst ongoing concerns about the H5N1 virus: “H5N1 has been circulating in various species and causing sporadic human infections for over two decades, and so far we haven’t had a pandemic.” 

Dr. Jennifer Adair discussed her work with collaborators across the globe and the challenges of gene therapy access. She also said, “I would love to see patients engaged as co-creators in these medicines in much more meaningful ways.”

Dr. Neel Bhatt and co-authors found lower employment rates in adult survivors of childhood cancer, suggesting “a multidisciplinary approach involving survivors, clinicians, and employers” is needed to address their long-term employment needs.

Dr. Joe Unger and collaborators pointed out that in their study of cancer clinical trial participation, “these results suggest that contributions to clinical research for adults with cancer is more common than is typically realized.”

Dr. Janie Lee discussed how early screening saves lives: “And increasingly now, there's information that screening in the 40s also reduces breast cancer as well."

Louis Shackleford emphasized that “the prospect of having a vaccine that can last for years and give us sustained protection from HIV would be an amazing boon for communities such as the Black community who disproportionately are suffering from HIV.”

Dr. Trevor Bedford noted that “separate from the sequencing for evolution [of the virus], which I think is very important, just even understanding prevalence through space and time... would be really helpful and important.”

Dr. Scott Ramsey emphasized that cancer patients who file for bankruptcy have an 80% higher risk of dying from cancer than patients who don’t file. He said, “There actually was a pretty big detriment for survival.”

Dr. Pavitra Roychoudhury described how researchers sequenced a bird flu genome from store-bought milk, noting that “this is, to our knowledge, the first time it’s been done in commercially available milk, to obtain the full genome.”

Dr. Lisa Newcomb discussed active surveillance for prostate cancer in her new study: “We hope that this study encourages the national acceptance of active surveillance instead of immediate treatment for prostate cancer.”

Dr. Keith Jerome described how his team’s herpes cure research could help people who want to be cured of their infection: “What we want to do is offer a tool that says if this really matters to you, we can help make your life better.”

Dr. Elizabeth Loggers discussed the benefits of offering patients palliative care virtually: “They can be at home, in their pajamas, and their caregivers or anyone else across the country can sit in on that appointment to act as support.”

Dr. Chris Li explained: “I felt a responsibility to try and enhance the diversity of our faculty more broadly and provide some of that mentorship and sponsorship that I think could help promote further diversity in science.”

A feature on leaders in cancer clinical trials included Drs. Garnet Anderson, Ruth Etzioni, Ziding Feng, Katherine Guthrie, Charles Kooperberg and Scott Ramsey for their work on the new Cancer Screening Research Network, based at Fred Hutch.

Dr. Keith Jerome discussed his team’s progress in developing a gene therapy for herpes simplex virus. He said, “There’s not a cure yet that everybody can go out and get, but we’re getting closer to a cure.”

Dr. Sara Hurvitz discussed three breast cancer studies presented at ASCO, “this was an exciting conference, with a large amount of data out.” The three abstracts discussed were  DB-06, postMONARCH and INAVO120 study.

Dr. Mazyar Shadman discussed CAR-T vs. standard of care for large B-cell lymphoma patients: “CAR-T remains to be standard of care for patients who are eligible and if they have access to it.” 

Dr. Stephanie Lee advocated for having “quality of life” be an endpoint in cancer treatments, along with survival. She said: “It's not just survival. If you look at FDA parlance, it's length of life and it's quality of life.”

Dr. Yaw Nyame encouraged men in their 40s to discuss cancer screening with their doctors. “That routine of going in annually having to check up, discussing preventative health,” he said, “unfortunately, that’s not the norm for a lot of men.”

Ro Yoon and Dr. Larry Corey shared perspectives on HIV research, activism and public fatigue. Yoon emphasized the importance of keeping HIV “relevant to an audience that might not be aware of the long, hard history of activism.”

The Cancer Letter highlighted Science Education’s new program, Partners in Science 2.0, along with other summer programs at Fred Hutch that aim to educate students and teachers.