Dr. Tom Lynch, President and Director at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, believes the future of cancer research is in data science. The Seattle-based nonprofit is looking to this area to help unlock the next breakthroughs in cancer treatment and prevention.
To help lead this innovation, Lynch has brought on Dr. Jeffrey Leek from the Johns Hopkins Data Lab as the organization’s first chief data officer.
When asked about the most promising areas of cancer research at this time, Lynch said, “Let’s talk about immunotherapy, for one. The progress that’s been made in immunotherapy, particularly at Fred Hutch and at the University of Washington, the idea of understanding you can take a T-cell and specifically design and engineer a T-cell to go after a patient’s cancer, is incredibly exciting. It’s been a real game changer.”