“Rather than trying to cure end-stage cancer, we need to redirect our focus to preventing the disease,” said Michael B. Sporn, M.D., Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, N.H. “This means controlling the carcinogenic process before the complex series of events that result in metastatic malignancy have occurred. We have to get rid of the common misconception that people are healthy until they are told they have an invasive cancer. The process leading to cancer takes many, many years.”

BenchMarks interviewed Sporn, Peter Greenwald, M.D., Dr.P.H., director of NCI’s Division of Cancer Prevention, and other cancer prevention leaders to look at how science is learning to intervene in the carcinogenic process and take new pathways toward progress.