Professor
Center for Metabolic and Liver Diseases
Despite much progress in the past 100 years in understanding the pathogenesis of many common diseases and their treatments, we do not understand how these diseases are initiated.
For example, take pancreatic cancer. We know that it is associated with mutations in the KRAs gene. However, these mutations are very common and approximately 70 percent of the adult population bear such mutations in their pancreatic epithelial cells; most of these people remain healthy.
However a small percentage progress to pancreatic cancer and the reason is poorly understood because KRAS mutations cause senescence, which inhibits the proliferation of potential cancer progenitors.
Type 2 diabetes is another very common disease due to insufficient production of insulin and a tight linkage to obesity. But not all obese people become diabetic. So what really accounts for progression to type 2 diabetes in obese individuals? It remains a mystery.
The failure to answer these critical questions hinders the development of disease prevention, which is far superior to therapy. I hope that in my lifetime I am able to help crack these challenges.