Assessing the State of Cancer Research: Insights from an Innovative Clinician-Scientist

Innovators

Dr. Raymond Bergan, Deputy Director at the University of Nebraska Medical Center Fred and Pamela Buffet Cancer Center and Professor in both UNMC’s Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer and the Division of Oncology and Hematology in the Department of Internal Medicine, joins Innovators to share his assessment of the state of cancer research and what may be reasonably expected within the near future. Dr. Bergan began his career at Northwestern University where he served as Director of Experimental Therapeutics and Leader of the Prevention Program for the University’s Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. In addition to breakthrough work on early-phase cancer chemo-prevention, he demonstrated a new way for measuring prevention therapy in the individual cancer patient, important steps toward precision medicine and personalized therapy. In 2015, Dr. Bergan was recruited to join the Oregon Health & Science University as Head of hematology and oncology and as Associate Director of medical oncology for the Knight Cancer Institute at OHSU. There too he led work that enabled individualized patient treatment with greater precision of effectiveness in ways that can change how cancer is treated henceforth.

In late 2020, Dr. Bergan joined the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

His undergraduate degree is from the State University of New York at Buffalo and he earned the M.D. from the SUNY Health Science Center at Syracuse, where he also completed his internship and residency. He was awarded two fellowships in the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Innovators is a podcast production of Harris Search Associates.

*The views and opinions shared by the guests on Innovators do not necessarily reflect the views of the interviewee's institution or organization.*