Michael Bishop, MD, chancellor of UC-San Francisco, spoke about the history and future of the role of genes in cancer biology last week.

Bishop, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his role in discovering how viral oncogenes cause cancer, first encountered DNA while reading Scientific American in medical school. Since then, his career has followed genetics research from before an understanding of how viruses cause cancer to today, when scientists can pinpoint genes that go awry in cancer cells.

"Cancer has been reduced to one problem: a problem with our genes," he told the Fairchild Auditorium crowd.

Although researchers have made great strides understanding which genes underlie different forms of cancer, Bishop doesn’t expect a cure in the near future. "We are still far from the tape in this marathon," he said.