Last night Ken and I attended a cocktail party hosted by Carole Ellison at her beautiful Kirkland waterfront condominimum featuring Dr. Lee Hood, Founder and President of Institute for Systems Biology.
His Institute for Systems Biology faculty associate, Dr. Ilya Shmulevich spoke passionately about how cancer should be viewed as part of the overall system of our bodies versus as a germ that enters into our bodies from an outside source. They believe that what causes cancer is a morphing of individual cells that reproduce within our bodies and that the actual fingerprint of various cancers is not separated by which organs they inhabit, but instead what cell variations or mutations occur in the body. The cancer "fingerprint" for breast cancer can be absolutely the same as that for ovarian cancer. They both also believe that millions of dollars can be saved in cancer research if instead of addressing cancer with only one drug at a time since the cells quickly mutate to avoid the effects of the drug, that at least three drugs should be used simultaneously to overcome this obstacle. Though some of the slides were far too complicated for most of the layperson audience, Dr. Shmulevich was a fascinating speaker.
Some of those whom we knew also attending the event were Stan McNaughton, Gordon Kuenster, Bob Cremin, Patti Payne, Gloria Northcroft, Sherri Rogalski, Robin DuBrin and Doug Howe.
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