An Eternal Verity: Young Investigators

By Jonathan W. Simons, MD
President and Chief Executive Officer
David H. Koch Chair

Dr. Charles Huggins was pithy in speech, and wrote concise research reports with the philosophy that "less is more." When it comes to youth in cancer research, I believe he said it best in the late 1960s: "I believe in three things: young people, hard work, and finding cures for cancer."

Huggins was an authority on young investigators. He was a urologist-scientist at the University of Chicago and won the Nobel Prize for discovering that prostate cancer and breast cancer were dependent on hormones. He surrounded himself with brilliant students who assisted him in all the key experimentation leading to his Nobel Prize. (A great source of information on Huggins is http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/1997/19970113-huggins.html.)

I was introduced to Dr. Huggins at Johns Hopkins almost thirty years later by my own mentor, Dr. Donald Coffey. Huggins felt Coffey was a spiritual disciple—a research director for a new generation. He encouraged Coffey constantly to mentor unselfishly. Huggins was ninety when I met him. He was elderly but intellectually incisive. As a young investigator myself (with my first CaPCure and NCI "K" Physician Scientist Awards), I asked him what advice he had for young investigators in 1995. Huggins smiled and said, "Enjoy the unfettered arrogance of youth in your own experiments, and surround yourself with young people doing unfettered experiments when you find you are not so young any more."

Coffey later explained to me that whenever Huggins traveled, he always spent more time with postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty than senior faculty. He learned more that way.

During the month, I visited Stanford University's Cancer Nanotechnology Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the University of California at San Francisco, the University of Pennsylvania and Georgia Tech. I had to give research seminars as a visiting professor or attend research meetings, fulfilling commitments that I made prior to taking my current position. In addition, I spent a day at Johns Hopkins with PCF board member Chris Evensen evaluating the progress of our $5 million PCF Safeway Thermal Enhanced Metastatic Therapy Program, meeting with post-doctoral researchers and former students.

During these visits, I had the occasion to talk about science and clinical research with 14 graduate students, 11 postdoctoral researchers, and five assistant professors. In these discussions I observed four things. First, more women with PhD and MD, PhD credentials are working on prostate cancer in laboratories than ever before. Why? It's because of their fathers' experience with the disease or, in some cases, because prostate cancer poses some of the most intellectually challenging problems in cancer biology.

Secondly, more than half of those with whom I met were native Chinese or Hindi speakers before they learned English. Thirdly, all are realistic that more meritorious research ideas exist now than can be funded—dozens of unemployed research ideas languish at every major academic center. In fact, every major cancer center has a Depression-era Hooverville of unfunded, yet creative and ingenious ideas right now. Yet, all I met were optimistic about their own contributions ahead. Finally, almost everyone perceives attaining PCF funding at some point in their career as a prestigious achievement.

The fight against prostate cancer requires more than just funding advanced research projects. In an environment where the number of exceptionally-trained, highly educated individuals who choose to enter the field of science and technology is dwindling, ensuring a pipeline of talent that will continue advancing the cause is crucial. Thus, human capital for research is our most precious asset.

Nurturing and perpetuating promising careers has become the most difficult of our many challenges in the current funding environment. The PCF's Young Investigators Awards program keeps the field of prostate cancer research vibrant with new ideas by identifying future research leaders who are in their thirties. These $225,000 awards provide three years of career and project support for young (generally 35 and under), proven investigators who have already achieved junior faculty positions and committed their lives to the field of prostate cancer. Each Young Investigator is required to have an accomplished and committed mentor; the dollar amount is matched by host institutions. We are impressed by their exceptional dedication to the field and the ingenuity of their research proposals.

The response to our first year's call for applicants was global, producing 76 applications from eight countries in North America, Europe and Asia. The research proposals covered 16 different areas of prostate cancer research. The applicants represented seven medical and scientific disciplines including; medical oncology, radiation oncology, urology, pathology, imaging science and many areas of molecular science. The response was gratifying.

Now, in a fitting capstone to September's activities, I am able to write about the inaugural class of PCF Young Investigators. You cannot imagine my pleasure to share with you the backgrounds of these 19 young investigators and the patrons who are supporting them.

Patron—if you look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary—is derived from the Latin word "patronus." Patronus means more than "father figure." It connotes protector, defender and advocate as a part of the support. So our patrons of PCF Young Investigators are advocates and defenders of creative, young cancer scientists. In the current funding climate for research, our patrons of Young Investigators are to prostate cancer research, as the Medici’s were to Florentine artisans and craftsmen: defenders and advocates of the truly gifted who are emerging into greatness.

Click here to meet our 2008 Young Investigator Award Recipients

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