In the driver's seat

As precision medicine starts to offer insights to disease at a completely new scale and depth, separating molecular abnormalities that drive cancer from those that don't is becoming an achievable goal, according to the National Cancer Institute's new acting director, Douglas Lowy.

Lowy, whose research formed the basis of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, scores recent advances such as immunotherapy as successes for basic research, and thinks that keeping researchers engaged in basic as well as translational research should be one of the top priorities for the institute...