A Lab Tea Party & a Career in Cancer Kinases Inside Cancer Careers

In this episode of Inside Cancer Careers, we hear from Dr. Adrienne Boire, a Physician Scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discuss how being a clinician in the research world is like Alice in Wonderland. We then hear from Dr. Jim Woodgett, a President and Scientific Director of the Terry Fox Research Institute, Canada, Senior Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI), and Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, who shares his career in cancer kinases from the point of view of a scientist, institute director, and head of a funding organization. 

Segment 1: A Lab Tea Party 

The Adrienne Boire Lab  
The Joan Massagué Lab  


Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll  
ChatGPT  

 

Ad: NanCI by NCI mobile application  

Segment 2: A Career in Cancer Kinases 


Dr. Jim R. Woodgett  
Ludwig Cancer Research  
Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute  
Terry Fox Research Institute  

Your Turn: Guests Recommendations  


A Poem Titled "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver  
BBC Two by Horizon  
TRANSCRIPT
[UPBEAT MUSIC] 

OLIVER BOGLER: Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute. I'm your host Oliver Bogler. I work at the NCI, in the Center for Cancer Training. 

On Inside Cancer Careers we explore all the different ways that people join the fight against disease and hear their stories.  

Today we are talking to Dr. Adrienne Boire a physician scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center about how being a clinician in a research world is like Alice in Wonderland, and Dr. Jim Woodgett of the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute who shares his experience on cancer research from the point of view of a scientist, institute director and head of a funding organization. 

Listen to the end for recommendations from our guests and to hear how you can send us yours in a segment we call “Your Turn”. 

OLIVER: It's a pleasure to welcome Dr. Adrienne Boire to the show. Dr. Boire is an associate member of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. She's a physician-scientist who treats and studies brain metastases, and I met her at a conference where she gave a really intriguing talk on lab culture, which we'll get to in a minute, but Dr. Boire, welcome. 

ADRIENNE BOIRE: Thank you. It's lovely to be here. 

OLIVER: And I wanted to start with your journey. I'm always fascinated to learn how people come to do the work that they do, and I wonder if you'd be willing to share that with us? 

ADRIENNE: Oh, sure. Yes, I think my path to becoming a physician-scientist is certainly not a traditional one. I grew up in Minnesota, and was always a curious kid, but truthfully, I thought that when I was going to college, that I might become a diplomat. I really enjoyed foreign languages. I enjoyed the idea that, you know, through listening, and kind of considering all of the possibilities that we could ultimately find ways to compromise. And, you know, I was an idealist, so, you know, come to world peace, right? But when I was in college, I was taking a biology class, a biochemistry class, and we were hearing a -- we were hearing about the Krebs cycle for the first time, and it was a transformative event for me, as unbelievable as that sounds, because I know quite a lot of people don't love biochemistry. So we were hearing about, you know, the just the basic processes that underlie molecular life, and I thought it was just gorgeous. I mean, it still is gorgeous. It still gives me goosebumps. It still kind of inspires me actually, this idea that the, you know, the biochemistry is really the grammar of life, right? And I think that was sort of my entry into all of biology, into becoming a scientist, was this idea that I really wanted to understand kind of the grammar of life. I really