Log in

goodpods headphones icon

To access all our features

Open the Goodpods app
Close icon
headphones
The Cancer History Project

The Cancer History Project

Cancer History Project

A podcast of oral histories and interviews with the people who have shaped oncology as we know it. The Cancer History Project is an initiative by The Cancer Letter, oncology's longest-running news publication. The Cancer History Project’s archives are available online at CancerHistoryProject.com.
bookmark
Share icon

All episodes

Best episodes

Seasons

Top 10 The Cancer History Project Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Cancer History Project episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Cancer History Project for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Cancer History Project episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

In this conversation, Roderick Pettigrew speaks with Robert Winn, guest editor of The Cancer Letter and the Cancer History Project during Black History Month, about Pettigrew’s contributions to research, how he became an early self-taught expert on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or the MRI, as well as when he became founding director of National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

Pettigrew is chief executive officer of Engineering Health (EnHealth) and inaugural dean for Engineering Medicine (EnMed) at Texas A&M University in partnership with Houston Methodist Hospital, and the Endowed Robert A. Welch Chair in Medicine and founding director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. Winn is the director and Lipman Chair in Oncology at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, and senior associate dean for cancer innovation and professor of pulmonary disease and critical care medicine at VCU School of Medicine.

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

In this conversation, Vivian Pinn speaks with Robert Winn, guest editor of The Cancer Letter and the Cancer History Project during Black History Month, about the obstacles she faced as a medical student, how she incidentally helped integrate restaurants in Charlottesville in the 1960s, and her beginnings as a Research Fellow in Immunopathology at NIH.

Pinn was the only African American and the only woman in her class to graduate from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1967. In 1982, she was the first African American woman to chair an academic pathology department in the United States, at Howard University College of Medicine.

She went on to become the first full-time director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at NIH in 1991.

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

In 1964, the Office of the Surgeon General issued a report on smoking and health that ended a debate that had raged for decades—stating that cigarettes cause lung cancer and other diseases.

Sixty years later, Alan Blum, professor and Gerald Leon Wallace M.D. Endowed Chair in Family Medicine at the University of Alabama, as well as the director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, sits down with Donald S. Shopland, an original member of the staff of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General upon its formation in 1962.

Since 1962, Shopland has served as an editor of 17 reports of the surgeon general on smoking and health, as interim director of the Office on Smoking and Health for two years in the 1980s, and as an advisor on smoking and health at NCI. He retired in 2014.

You can read the transcript here.

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

George Santos, founder of Johns Hopkins University Bone Marrow Transplantation Program, pioneered many of the innovations used in bone marrow transplantation that are relevant today—but he didn’t get nearly as much credit as others working in the field.

Richard J. Jones, professor of oncology and medicine, director of the Bone Marrow Transplantation Program, and co-director, Hematologic Malignancies Program, at The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, spoke with the Cancer History Project about George Santos's legacy.

“Much of what we’re currently doing in bone marrow transplant internationally was developed by George,” Jones said.

A transcript of this conversation is available here.

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

In this episode, Judith L. Pearson, best-selling author and founder of A 2nd Act, speaks with Alexandria Carolan, associate editor with the Cancer History Project.

Delving deep into Mary Lasker’s role as the “catalytic agent” who worked behind the scenes through proxies to accomplish the goal of curing cancer, Pearson wrote “Crusade to Heal America: The Remarkable Life of Mary Lasker.”

“She just wanted to light the fire and then wanted everybody else to go to work to make it happen,” Pearson said to The Cancer Letter. “She would give them whatever resources were necessary, including some of her own money, to make sure that the right congressmen and senators held positions got reelected, or got elected, and then went into the appropriate committees.”

A transcript of this recording appears on the Cancer History Project.

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

At age 18, during basic training in Fort Polk, Louisiana, Chris Lundy slipped and broke his wrist.

At the hospital, the doctors set his wrist and ran some blood tests. What Lundy thought would be a simple visit turned into a series of months-long hospital stays.

Lundy was diagnosed with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, and his doctors sent him to Seattle, where he would become a patient of Donnall Thomas. Thomas would share the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 discoveries concerning organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease.

Today, Lundy is the longest living recipient of an allogeneic transplant for aplastic anemia at Fred Hutch Cancer Center. He received the bone marrow transplant that saved his life in 1971.

In this interview, Chris and his brother, Jerry Lundy, speak with Dr. Deborah Doroshow, an oncologist at the Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Doroshow, who is also a historian of medicine, is a member of the editorial board of the Cancer History Project.

Read more here: https://cancerhistoryproject.com/article/chris-lundy-had-one-week-to-live-52-years-later-he-is-the-longest-living-bmt-recipient-at-the-hutch/

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

Marcus Humphrey, who was diagnosed with two subtypes of lymphoma in 2021, and his wife Mary Humphrey speak with Dr. Deborah Doroshow, an oncologist at the Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Doroshow, who is also a historian of medicine, is a member of the editorial board of the Cancer History Project and is guest editor during National Cancer Survivor Month this June.

Humphrey sought treatment at Medical University of South Carolina Hollings Cancer Center for a swelling that had grown exponentially on the right side of his neck. Two regimens of chemotherapy failed. Marcus Humphrey’s oncologist later said it was the worst case of lymphoma he had ever seen.

Humphrey was almost out of options—and his heavy tumor burden made doctors wary of CAR T-cell therapy. They weighed the risks and went for it.

After receiving treatment with CAR T cell therapy, and managing the side effects of neurotoxicity, cytokine release syndrome, and mobility issues—Humphrey’s scans are clear. He’s vacationing in Italy now, and was overlooking the Adriatic sea with his wife Mary during this conversation, available on the Cancer History Project.

bookmark
plus icon
share episode
The Cancer History Project - Women’s History Month panel: Breast cancer in the White House
play

03/10/23 • 57 min

This episode features a recording of a March 7 Women’s History Month panel on the topic of Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, and how their cancer diagnoses impacted a nation.

The panel was introduced by Monica Bertagnolli, MD, director of the National Cancer Institute, and moderated by Stacy Wentworth, MD, assistant professor of radiation oncology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Medical director of cancer survivorship at Atrium Wake Forest Baptist Health Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Bertagnolli and Wentworth were joined by Mirelle Luecke, MA, PhD, Supervisory museum curator of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, and Karen Tumulty, MBA, Deputy editorial page editor and columnist at The Washington Post.

A transcript of this recording appears on the Cancer History Project.

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

In this conversation, Richard Silvera, assistant professor of infectious disease at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, speaks with Robert A. Winn, director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and guest editor of the Cancer History Project during Black History Month.

Silvera is a recipient of a grant from the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Award Program, which was established in 2020 by the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation.

In this episode Silvera discusses his work caring for patients with anal cancer in the Bronx, and how doctors can gain the trust of underserved populations."

None of this work happens in isolation, but I don’t want to just be one researcher on an island by myself. I want to be part of a community of researchers doing this work," Silvera said.

A transcript of this recording appears on The Cancer Letter.

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

Soon after he was diagnosed with a dedifferentiated liposarcoma, C. Norman Coleman reached out to The Cancer Letter and the Cancer History Project to initiate a series of interviews about his life and career.

The plan was to keep going for as long as possible. Alas, only one interview–about an hour’s worth–got done. Coleman spoke with Otis Brawley and Paul Goldberg, co-editors of the Cancer History Project.

Coleman died March 1 at 79.

At NCI, Coleman was the associate director of the Radiation Research Program, senior investigator in the Radiation Oncology Branch in the Center for Cancer Research, and leader of a research laboratory at NIH. He was also the founder of the International Cancer Expert Corps, a non-profit he created to provide mentorship to cancer professionals in low- and middle-income countries and in regions with indigenous populations in upper-income countries.

This interview is available as a transcript on the Cancer History Project.

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

Show more best episodes

Toggle view more icon

FAQ

How many episodes does The Cancer History Project have?

The Cancer History Project currently has 45 episodes available.

What topics does The Cancer History Project cover?

The podcast is about Health & Fitness, Medicine and Podcasts.

What is the most popular episode on The Cancer History Project?

The episode title 'Lung cancer couldn’t slow down physician and athlete Lawrence Phillips' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on The Cancer History Project?

The average episode length on The Cancer History Project is 50 minutes.

How often are episodes of The Cancer History Project released?

Episodes of The Cancer History Project are typically released every 20 days, 23 hours.

When was the first episode of The Cancer History Project?

The first episode of The Cancer History Project was released on Feb 9, 2022.

Show more FAQ

Toggle view more icon

Comments