Lately I've found it useful to not only reflect on all we've all lost over the last year, but also consider why - in the spirit of #InaugurationDay - there's so much to be optimistic about...

Particularly biomedical optimism:
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There's the obvious COVID-19 vaccine story, but more generally I've been reflecting on aspects of my clinical life from my start of fellowship (~10 years ago) to now and how while it may not have seemed clear in real time, the progress/potential is really remarkable

Some aspects of how I care for my cancer patients are unrecognizable - widely metastatic cancer patients approaching 5+ year complete responses to immunotherapy, patients on combination targeted therapies for many years based on genomics, and much more coming...

E.g. as a first year fellow, my met. prostate cancer patients were treated w/ hormone Rx, chemo, steroids

Now there's many androgen therapies, other targeted or immune therapies based on NGS, combinations, nuc med, other chemo, + more

Its really unrecognizable (in a good way!)

Human diseases that occupied much of my medical school & internal medicine training are poised for revolutions - rare genetic syndromes, sickle cell, all the way through to common cardiovascular problems are changing before our eyes w/ genome editing...it's amazing!

By the mid-2010s, many students had approached me for cancer genomics machine learning projects, but our data were too small & patients were not engaged

It's still early, but patients are now at the center of these efforts (e.g. @PrCaProject) & we're poised to make major leaps

There's so much science & medicine to be excited about - this & much more!

Thinking through this proved to be a great positive-vibes exercise for me. Would love to hear more @DrAnneCarpenter @DrSidMukherjee @zachweinberg @tmprowell @Bob_Wachter @tara_vijayan #ScienceisBack [fin]