Robert Weinberg
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"Robert Allan Weinberg" is a biologist Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research/Ludwig Center of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/MIT and American Cancer Society Research Professor; his research is in the area of oncogenes and the genetic basis of human cancer.

Robert Weinberg is also affiliated with the Broad Institute and is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He co-teaches Massachusetts Institute of Technology/MIT course [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/biology/7-012-introduction-to-biology-fall-2004/ 7.012 (introductory biology)] with Eric Lander. Weinberg and Lander are among the co-founders of Verastem, biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing drugs to treat cancer by targeting cancer stem cells.

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It's a worthy effort, but misplaced in that particular location.

Other cancers need to learn how to spread, but not melanoma. Now, for the first time, we understand the genetic mechanism.

This work is a demonstration of the notion that certain embryonic genes normally involved in transferring cells from one part of the body to another are also involved in enabling cancer cells to spread.

Our knowledge base is still rather fragmentary, and we need another year or two of research before we can say to pharmaceutical companies you should do this or that.

This is one of the nicer industrial business areas in Daytona Beach. They need to give more thought to where they want to put something like that.

DNA repair stands as the dike between us and the inundation of mutations.

We're close to being able to put our arms around the whole cancer problem. We've completed the list of all cancer cells needed to create a malignancy. And I wouldn't have said that five years ago.

I think this is one of the most interesting developments in cancer research in the last five years.

My choice would be public schools, because I'm a product of the public school system.