Conversations with the Pioneers of Oncology: Dr. Samuel Hellman

Dr. Daniel F. Hayes is the Stuart B. Padnos Professor of Breast Cancer Research at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. Dr. Hayes’ research interests are in the field of experimental therapeutics and cancer biomarkers, especially in breast cancer. He has served as chair of the SWOG Breast Cancer Translational Medicine Committee, and he was an inaugural member and chaired the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Tumor Marker Guidelines Committee. Dr. Hayes served on the ASCO Board of Directors, and served a 3 year term as President of ASCO from 2016-2018.

The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnoses or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.

Hello. Welcome to "Cancer Stories." I'm Dr. Daniel Hayes, a medical oncologist, and translational researcher at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center, and I've also been the past president of ASCO. I'll be your host for a series of interviews with the founders of our field.

Over the last 40 years, I've been fortunate to have been trained, mentored, and inspired by many of these pioneers. It's my hope that through these conversations we can all be equally inspired, by gaining an appreciation of the courage, the vision, and the scientific understanding that led these men and women to establish the field of clinical cancer care over the last 70 years.

By understanding how we got to the present and what we now consider normal in oncology, we can also imagine and work together towards a better future, where we offer patients better treatments and we're also able to support them and their families during and after cancer treatment.

Today, My guest on this broadcast is Dr. Samuel Hellman, who is generally considered one of the fathers of modern radiation oncology in the United States and frankly, worldwide. Dr. Hellman is currently a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Pritzker Medical School, where he served as the dean from 1988 to 1993. And he's been the A.N. Pritzker Professor of the Division of Biological Sciences. He's also served as the vice president of the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Prior to moving to Chicago in the late 1980s, he had previously been physician in chief and the professor of radiation oncology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He served there from 1983 to 1988, and he was also chair of the Department of Radiation Therapy at the Harvard Medical School, where he served as the co-founding director of the Joint Center for Radiation Therapy.

Dr. Hellman has authored over 250 peer-reviewed papers, and he's been one of the co-editors of one of the leading textbooks on oncology, Cancer, Principles and Practice.

Dr. Hellman has won many awards and honors, including being named a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine, formerly the Institute of Medicine, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is frankly, one of the few individuals to serve as president of both the American Association of Cancer Research and the American Society of Clinical Oncology, for which he was actually, I believe-- correct me if I'm wrong Dr. Hellman-- the first radiation oncologist to hold that position, which he served in 1986 to 1987. Dr. Hellman, welcome to our program.

Thank you for having me.

I hope I got all that right. Your introduction has taken longer than some of the others. You have been so prominent in the field. I have a series of questions. The whole point of this is sort of like Jerry Seinfeld's Riding in a Cab with Friends. I've always said, if I had an opportunity to right with some of the giants in our field, what would I ask them during a cab ride? So I get to ask the questions, and you get to answer.

I know you grew up in the Bronx. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background? I'm particularly intrigued about the fact that a boy from the Bronx ended up at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. Why'd you go there? What was your interest? Was it always in science and medicine, or did you have something else in mind?

OK. Well, start with the Bronx. I was born in 1934 in the Bronx in a nice part of the city, which doesn't often go with descriptions of the Bronx today, but it was at that time. And about well, 1950, which was when I entered my senior year in high school, I had gone to high school at DeWitt Clinton High School.

And as I say, my senior year, we moved to Long Island, and I spent my senior year at Lawrence High School. The important part of this is that Clinton had about 4,500 to 5,000 boys, and Lawrence High School was much smaller and most importantly,...