Now on the Tee

"Now on the Tee... "

I am extremely excited to assume the role of Chief Golf Officer for Ci4CC! For those that know me well, this comes as no surprise as golf and cancer informatics combine to comprise about 124% of my personality. But since very few people would have the combination of the two on their bingo cards of rational pairings, I thought I would use this post to highlight some similarities between the two.


For golfers the end of the year always brings hope and joy. Not because of thoughtful reflection on last year’s learnings or profound personal resolutions for the new year, but because many of the major golf equipment manufacturers release their new club lines in January, ahead of the PGA Show (better known by no one but me as ‘the ASCO of golf equipment’). I’ve played golf for over 40 years, and one of the (few) things I’ve learned from hitting thousands of bad shots is: it’s always the club’s fault, that club should have tried harder. 


So I share the same dream of many golfers - that I can buy my way to greatness with a new driver! Yes, I admit I have a problem.


This equipment fever began in earnest in the mid-1990s. It was a combination of increased availability of titanium * , coupled with the emerging use of computer-assisted design (CAD) in clubhead design that allowed clubmakers to create new clubheads that could take best advantage of the benefits of titanium, being lighter and stronger than steel. The launch of the Taylormade Titanium Bubble driver as the first mass-produced titanium club in 1995 launched an equipment arms race amongst golf club manufacturers that continues to this day. 


But where else have we seen this pattern of a breakthrough powered by the emergence of a new substrate to exploit, coupled with leveraging advanced computational techniques? Obviously, the answer is the explosive progress in cancer therapies that started in the 2000s! Follow me around the bend here readers as I connect the dots…

Cancer informatics has been the backbone for the incredible progress made in cancer care over the last 20 years. In the 2000s, the emergence of molecular and clinical data about the disease and the patient (from genomics and electronic health record data) drove the evolution of the field of cancer informatics to harness and leverage this newly available data. 


This coupling of data and informatics resulted in an astounding acceleration in oncology drug discovery. For example, Gleevec (widely recognized as one of the first molecular targeted therapies) took over 40 years to go from target discovery to its FDA approval in 2001 . Compare that to Xalkori, which was developed in the age of data and informatics and took only 4 years to become an approved therapy for lung cancer patients in 2011. Targeted therapies such as these have now become a mainstay of late cancer treatment, joined by even newer classes of treatments such as immunotherapies, cellular therapies, and antibody-drug conjugates, amongst others. 

In my next post, I’ll extend the metaphor between golf clubs and cancer therapies further, as we discuss how the emergence of AI has impacted both cancer informatics and golf equipment. 


So until then…


Hit ‘em straight, hit ‘em often,


Fred


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Fred Lee, MD, MPH

Cancer Center Informatics Society

Chief Golf Officer


Click here for Fred's Bio


 * Titanium became more readily available for commercial purposes in the 1990s with the fall of the USSR! Russia became one of the largest suppliers of titanium, largely to power their expanding military uses of the metal. With the collapse of the Soviet military-industrial complex, a huge glut of titanium became available for commercial uses, much to the delight of golfers everywhere. Spasiba Comrade Gorbachev!
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