Asking the Right Questions in Cancer Research

Throughout his career as a physician-scientist, first studying cancer genomics in academia and now pushing forward new therapies in industry, Levi Garraway, MD ’99 PhD ’99, has embraced a simple tenet: Chance favors the prepared mind.

“The idea is that you come curious and ready to work and immerse yourself in interesting problems,” Garraway says. “Part of it is chance, but you also have to understand how to ask the right questions.”

Garraway arrived at HMS intending to study infectious diseases, but his plans changed when his father was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. “I found myself in the library spending as much time reading about what was happening in cancer research as I was on my PhD thesis topic,” he recalls. As he realized that very little of the research was being translated into better cancer therapies, his curiosity turned into what he describes as “vexing frustration.” This frustration helped convince him to devote his career to studying cancer, with the goal of improving treatments.

Garraway finished his training at the perfect time to join the field of cancer genomics. “For the first time, it was possible to look at cancers at a whole-genome level,” he says. “We didn’t know what we were going to learn, but we were quite certain that there would be something important.”

In the early 2000s, Garraway and colleagues in his lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute used genomic tools to map various cancers. In the process, they made discoveries about the genes that drive cancer and the genetic mechanisms that enable tumor cells to resist treatment. “The progression of the field has been breathtaking, and the technology continues to expand at a remarkable rate,” Garraway says.

In 2013, Dana-Farber established the Joint Center for Cancer Precision Medicine with Garraway as its founding director. His work there, he says, was “a great opportunity to create a bridge between the cancer genetics insights and key clinical questions.”

As Garraway’s interest in the therapeutic side of cancer research continued to grow, he eventually made the leap from academia to industry, moving first to Eli Lilly and then to Roche, where he is now the head of global product development and chief medical officer.

Garraway has what he describes as his “dream job,” overseeing late-stage drug development for five disease areas, including cancer. “I spend a lot of my time gathering information to help us make decisions about bringing new medicines forward,” Garraway says, adding that the process draws daily on his experiences as both a scientist and a physician.

Garraway considers his work to be equal parts humbling and thrilling — humbling when lab research doesn’t translate into humans as expected and thrilling when it finally does. “Developing a therapy that improves survival can mean one more wedding or anniversary or season of college football,” Garraway says. “It’s meaningful for patients and families, and that’s what gets me up in the morning.”