Dr. Venook on the Need for Collaboration in Research

Alan P. Venook, MD, a professor in the Department of Medicine (Hematology/Oncology) at the University of California, San Francisco, discusses the need for collaboration in cancer research.

There are a couple of reasons that U.S. physicians attend conferences like the 15th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer, which was held from July 3-6, 2013, in Barcelona, Spain. Venook says that physicians in Europe are leading the field in advances and have a different regulatory environment and different interactions with the pharmaceutical industry.

In addition to learning directly from their European counterparts, U.S. physicians can see results from their studies too. This allows for physicians to work in a uniform way across the oceans, Venook says, in terms of doing research and asking questions that make sense. Venook says that cancer is not discriminatory against people in the U.S., Europe, or Asia, so collaboration is crucial.