THE THREE WISE MEN
Cancer has long been the trickiest of foes for scientists searching for ways to beat it. To proliferate and eventually kill us, cancer cells employ a dazzling array of skills. They have more disguises than the Scarlet Pimpernel, the sidestep of Sonny Bill and the transformational power of a silkworm.
Every year, in the United States alone, about $10 billion is spent researching cancer cures. Every year, worldwide, around 10 million people who can’t be cured will die. Many battles have been won, the latest of which has been the revolution in immunotherapy that has changed the direction of medicine research globally, but the war rages still.
In New Zealand, the most successful hothouse for new cancer drugs is the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre (ACSRC), which has a team of 80 scientists who populate a rabbit warren of offices and labs at Auckland University’s Medical School, above the former site of the city’s morgue. Established in 1956, it became less than 30 years later the first laboratory in the southern hemisphere to take an anti-cancer drug from discovery into clinical use.
But now, with the retirement of the centre’s three most decorated researchers, who have largely controlled the direction of its investigations for more than 40 years, the centre is at a critical crossroad. Can it mutate and survive, or will it lose its identity – and possibly its life?
New Zealand science is credited with a number-8 wire approach to innovation. The early years of what would become the world-renowned ACSRC grew out of makeshift accommodation in condemned ex-army huts at Green Lane Hospital and the inspirational genius of chemist Professor Bruce Cain.
There were none of
