No need for PMs, which I never check anyway. Anything you have to say to me, you can say in public. 
Hey, long-time lurker, first-time poster.
I’ve spent the last three years as a graduate student (PhD) in molecular pathology that studies breast cancer metastasis.
I would agree with previous posters that think that an MD/PhD is usually useless. You can do research with just an MD (designing and running experiments in biology in general is ridiculously easy and most experiments are collaborative anyway: you’ll always be able to find help somewhere). Conversely, if you’re a PhD, most of the biology information you would get from an MD you would already know and the clinical experience is nice, but probably not worth the extra years of work if you’re going to be doing bench work. There are of course exceptions. At my university, PhD students are encouraged to take classes with medical students: I’ve taken advantage of this to get a good background in histology and pathology (along with actual patient interaction in some clinical rounds) without the huge time commitment of full-time medical school.
As for cancer research in general, it is hugely over-saturated right now. Out of the probably tens of thousands of papers published every year, probably less than 1% reach conclusions that are actually useful. There is a huge lack of creativity in the field (as well as just plain bad science). I think this is due to the publish-or-perish paradigm in which people from non-established labs focus on easy targets that are often almost exact duplications of previous experiments or almost entirely irrelevant to anything helpful.
Another factor is probably that cancer research (and biology in general) is waiting for the next big technique. The possibilities of siRNA, fluorescent proteins, etc. have pretty much been exhausted. The number one thing that would change cancer research at this point would be specific transcription factor inhibitors: they have been a pipe-dream for years, but I think some research groups are on the verge. If they actually work, it could change everything. New imaging techniques, and 3D/4D mass spectroscopy will also be welcome
Another factor seldom talked about is that for all of the knowledge gained about cancer in the past 50 years, almost all of the reductions in death rates for cancer (70-90% depending on the source) has been due to better methods of detection. These are just basic clinical techniques like blood PSA detection for prostate cancer or mammography for breast cancer. Designing a simple, cheap yearly blood test for detecting all kinds of cancer would help reduce fatalities enormously (again, several groups are carrying out HUGE experiments to identify markers of cancer. They’re basically measuring biomarkers in a huge cohort over decades and seeing if any early changes correlate to later cancer development).
A background in computers combined with experience doing bench work would be great: right now programs written for use by biologists are terrible and are obviously written by people that have no experience actually doing the benchwork. Although the programs often work, they problems in usability reflect a lack of understanding of just what problems biologists are trying to solve.
So probably the best things you could do to help cure cancer would be to:
- write kick-ass programs for bioinformatics/image analysis/etc.
- create transcription factor inhibitors
- develop new methods of early detection
If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask: I try to keep on top of different aspects of the field even though I specifically work on breast cancer metastasis. I’ve become a little cynical about the field over the past few years but there are still plenty of people doing great work and I love doing it. Just be aware that the competition is intense, and the people you’ll work with often bizarre.
The seminar I had to give for my MS was about the genetics of Autistic Spectrum Disorders and using a Systems Biology (i.e. computational biology/bioinformatics) approach to tease out how the 100+ genes contribute, and to better define the subtypes. The same could help cancer research, as there are many genes involved in cancer and we don’t understand all of their interactions. In silico modeling can help build a map of influence and interaction and help predict the contribution of otherwise unknown genes.
As for PMing me, I suggest that only because I want to keep my SDMB identity separate from my IRL identity. I am willing to share my personal writings and my work with individuals who specifically ask. I tend to agree with CancerPerson in that cancer research is hitting a point of diminishing returns. We’ve done about all we can do on the research side with the tools we have. There may be a few more advances on the clinical side as they implement research findings, but they will be incremental rather than groundbreaking. Cells are incredibly complex and interconnected, and there’s just no easy answer.
I would love to take a molecular path class (or two), but my institution doesn’t have such a class. Despite being under the Medical School, the students in the individual departments (Biochem, Immunology/Microbiology, Pharm/Tox, etc.) are not allowed to sit in on the medical student classes or have any clinical exposure beyond dealing with body fluids or tissue samples.
Vlad/Igor
Don’t discount the purely computational/mathematical side. Protein folding is an extremely hard computational problem. Even modest increases in search rates (it takes on the order of 10,000 CPU days to simulate the folding of a single protein, for instance) would be hugely beneficial, and not just for cancer (Alzheimers, BSE, Huntingdon’s disease, etc.).
Even having a limited background in biology would give you an advantage here.
Even without going into the biology track, you can make significant contributions to cancer research, as well. I worked for a cancer foundation (created by government, but mostly funded through donations and research cooperation with other organizations) doing epidemiological computer work. My background is linguistics and computer science, but we were doing treatment programs and major studies with front-line cancer researchers. I’ve seen projects I worked on mentioned in papers numerous times in the years since.
Particularly in developing countries, where the rate of smoking is increasing at a much quicker rate than it is in North America.
The issue there is that you might need in-depth knowledge in a wide variety of disciplines, which might be impossible to gain consider the limited human lifespan and your own talents. Aside from that, there’s no guarantee that all cancers are caused by the same thing. I don’t know that they all have genetic components, for example.
How did you get almost 2 masters degrees before you suddenly decided you wanted to cure cancer?
I would say that further schooling is a waste of time at this point, focus on what you already know and pick up the rest on the job. There’s a lot of demand for people with your sort of skills and you’d be surprised by how little biology knowledge you need if you’re collaborating with the right people.
My advice would be to finish school and then try and land a research assistant type position in a research group and spend your time writing programs that support the researchers in what they do. Open source all of your code and make it well documented and modular enough such that other research groups can adapt it for their use.
I’m not sure this answers your question, but the Howard Hughes (Foundation?) in DC is 100% privately funded, and they give their researchers the freedom to do whatever they feel they need to do to figure this stuff out. Maybe a place like that could use your skills.
Okay, if you are concerned about privacy, you can send me a PM, and I’ll keep it secret.