Quote

Cancer is really a DNA disease... We have these certain genes that prevent our cells from growing out of control at the expense of the body. And it's a pretty good, robust system. But if a couple of these genes fail, then that's when cancer starts, and cells start growing out of control.

When you have cancer, it's like you enter a new time zone: the Cancer Zone. Everything in the Tropic of Cancer revolves around your health or your sickness. I didn't want my whole life to revolve around cancer. Life came first; cancer came second.

Cancer touches every family in one way or another. As other diseases are brought under control, cancer is set to become the number one killer, and is already in epidemic proportions worldwide.

Once cancer happens it changes the way you live for the rest of your life.

Cancer is not one disease but many diseases.

There's a rising cancer trend and, as I said, one of the major contributors is the overall ageing of the population - we aren't dying of other things, so we're dying of cancer.

We all live with cancer, whether it is present in ourselves or affects someone we love.

Cancer initiates due to a wide variety of causes, some of which are outside of our control or already occurred during our childhood.

Cancer is like the common cold; there are so many different types. In the future we'll still have cancer, but we'll detect it very, very early, so that it won't kill anybody. We'll zap it at the molecular level decades before it grows into a tumor.

We may have to learn to live with cancer rather than die of it. It means a big change in our mindset and how we do research. We haven't quite reached there yet.