The Biggest Challenge in Medicine with Neil deGrasse Tyson & Dr. Linda Malkas

Where do you see cancer research in 5-10 years?

My dad was diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (73 yo). Of the thyroid cancers, it's pretty much the worst with a 2% survival rate. His tumor was wrapped around the carotid artery and pushing up against his esophagus to almost perforating it. There were also a few spots in his lungs where it had metastasized. He was given more or less two months to live. Regardless, he started on radiation and chemotherapy. He then tested positive for the new gene therapy medication and started on that as well. This was all back in February. His latest PET scan showed zero tumor anywhere!! He's with us celebrating the holidays, which no one thought possible. It absolutely was not an easy year for him, nor is it still. The cancer drugs and treatments all did their jobs, but the side effects are brutal. He still has a long road ahead.

This was the longest I’ve seen Neil and Chuck be silent while the guest talks. Bravo to all!

Sounds like we just listened to a possible Nobel prize winner in Medicine. Excellent program!

Thank you so much Dr Malkas for your work. I have Stage IV cancer and you give me hope for young people in the future. I am so grateful for all the hard work cancer scientists do.

I am a cancer survivor and work for a cancer nonprofit and Linda broke down the most complex concepts into understandable descriptions (shower curtains and cocktails). I am blown away by your research and how you can describe it all. It did keep all 3 of the other smart guys quiet for a LONG time. Fascinated!

Dr. Linda Malkas is extremely impressive. Very interesting and highly well spoken. Absolutely one of the best interviews on this program. Thank you StarTalk for bringing in this charismatic expert. Wow. Great episode to everyone involved. 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

My husband died 7 years ago from cancer. Most important is proper ID of the cancer. I read so many papers and he endured so many treatments. Some I was most afraid of were the most helpful. Some were very painful and not helpful. In the end it was the proliferation rate that called the shots. It was a mathematical game all along. I hope we will someday win this fight. So many health resources would be available for other purposes if we do. We as a world live in an exciting time. As a species we have the chance to learn to live sustainably and prosper without becoming a cancer ourselves. Never before have we had the resources to do this. Today we do if we learn to listen to our better angels and control the small thinking ego greed within.

I have stage 4 ovarian cancer. I am with City of Hope. I have been being treated with a cocktail of 3 different drugs, but have had to go off of them for now as my heart was starting to have issues. My CA125 was going down and my ascites cleared up. I’m hoping I can get back on treatment soon, but the heart issues are worrisome. I was so impressed with this doctor and what she shared. Please have her back again soon.

Not many episodes does the crew just sit quietly and listen. Speaks volumes about what we are learning here.

Dr. Linda Malkas was a great guest. And all three hosts asked excellent questions. One of the best episodes.

As both a cancer patient and (former) biology major, I can certainly empathize with the difficulty in dealing with people ignorant of both how it works and how medicines are developed. This effort to educate us all is both welcome and much appreciated. Treatment options are continually getting better, regardless of which mutation you've got. My chemo regimen is relatively light in that, while it isn't pleasant, it isn't debilitating either. I'm able to work my career full-time and otherwise (more or less) live my life as I see fit, and my disease, despite not being caught until stage 4 is, at least for the time being, stable. Also, Dr. Malkas isn't kidding about platins being rough; my primary treatment included 6 months of oxaliplatin, and 2 years later I still have neuropathy in my fingers that appears to be permanent. Great discussion!

Neil, you should have interviewed Dr. Thomas N. Seyfried. He is Professor of Biology at Boston College, and received his Ph.D. in Genetics and Biochemistry. He has over 200 peer-reviewed publications and is author of the book, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer.

I hope you have Dr. Linda Malkus back. She is a wonderful teacher about cancer research. Keep us updated on this important research and get us more complete data with visual aids for in depth understanding. She should have students presenting her research in her own podcasts. Thank you so much for presenting this wonderful scientist. Shalom.

She is doing a great job communicating complex topics. With her analogies I understood most of the concepts. Love this talk.

Thank you Neil. My daughter was diagnosed with Fibrolameller HCC in August of 2019. flHCC is an ultra rare cancer that starts in the liver. She is 1 in 5,000,000. It is so rare that there is no standard of treatment other that to do surgery and hope you get it all. Liver surgery of this type is a grueling procedure that takes a minimum of 6 weeks to recover from. The median age for flHCC is 23. My daughter was 23 when diagnosed. A 9cm tumor was removed during her first surgery. Almost50 percent 8f her liver was removed. A year later her scan showed new growth. Surgery was done again and lymph nodes were removed. 3 months later scans showed two new possible spots and surgery was done on the non lu g spot. That turned out to be a false positive but still required 6 weeks to recover again. One more surgery was required to remove stitches that did not dissolve properly. She has now been NED - no evidence of disease for over 3 years. Obviously we all hope these good scans continue forever but this has a nasty habit of coming back as many cancers do. This AO-1996 sounds like a winner. Thank you for raising awareness about this drug.

Thanks for this interview! It was amazingly interesting. Linda was amazing: I think a professionost and an expert in a field as complex as molecular genetics being able to clearly answering to these questions and breaking concepts down in a such comprehensible way deserve praises!

Linda, thank you for your determination, knowledge, and forward thinking. I lost my mother in 2015 to breast cancer--I don't wish another woman out there to have to go through what she went through. I look forward to watching this research evolve and bringing forward better treatment.

I am already a cancer survivor. I had a cancerous polyp removed from my colon two years ago. My son-in-law just passed away two weeks ago from a brain tumor his 5 th, and another friend of our daughters is about to pass away from cancer that just got out of control in the past two months, thank you for giving us a glimpse into the future of a cure❤❤❤❤

This is one of the best, most informative of your short videos I have seen, and the best short video I have seen on cancer. Thank you very much for this, and please continue with videos that are not directly physics videos, but are on important topics.