The Importance of Patients as Partners, with Dr. Nikhil Wagle

We begin today with a statistic that is immediately concerning and curious: mortality from breast cancer is higher in black women than in white women. Among the challenges in studying this problem is a lack of data. That's because only a small fraction of the cancer genome atlas, that's the catalog of genetic mutations responsible for cancer, is comprised of African American patients. That's just one of the many obstacles in investing breast cancer that Dr. Nikhil Wagle is trying to solve.

Dr. Wagle is assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and medical oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he also is deputy director of the Center for Cancer Precision Medicine. Another hat that Dr. Wagle wears is leading the Metastatic Breast Cancer Project, a wide ranging effort to gather more breast cancer data, particularly from under-represented populations. I think you'll really enjoy this conversation. Dr. Wagle connects the personal with the science.

As you'll hear, one of his key lessons from years of research, the importance of bringing on patients as partners. You'll also hear something that I found more surprising. In an age of seemingly infinite scientific innovation, one of Dr. Wagle's key tools to building the data base? Social media. You can follow him on Twitter, @NikhilWagle. You also can listen to him here now. ...