Treating Cancer, with Selwyn Vickers

Cancer is among the most common and feared diseases in the modern world. Dr. Selwyn Vickers—president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center—joins host Mark Labberton to discuss how precision oncology, data, and faith are transforming cancer treatment.

A distinguished cancer surgeon and pancreatic cancer researcher, Vickers explains how groundbreaking advances in genomics, immunotherapy, and AI are transforming once-lethal diagnoses into survivable and even chronic conditions. Together, they explore not only the cutting-edge science of cancer care but also the spiritual, emotional, and social dimensions that affect every patient and caregiver.

Resonating with themes of suffering, hope, and resurrection, this conversation offers clarity, compassion, and courage for all who are affected by cancer—from those newly diagnosed, to medical professionals, to grieving families and curious listeners.

Episode Highlights

• “We’re getting to a point where we will, in the next five to seven years, have a much better chance to cure people—and to make pancreatic cancer a chronic illness.”
• “We are in what’s somewhat coined the golden age of cancer research.”
• “Cancer is a disease that creates an existential threat in ways no other illness does.”
• “If a tumour forms, it means your body’s immune system has made a social contract with the cancer.”
• “We changed the diagnosis in 10–12 percent of the patients who come to us—sometimes from cancer to no cancer.”
• “Cancer care is a team sport. And our patients often inspire us more than we help them.”

Helpful Links & Resources

• Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
• BioNTech – creators of mRNA vaccines for COVID and cancer
• CAR T-Cell Therapy Overview (Cancer.gov)
• Tim Keller on cancer and hope
• Emma Thompson’s Wit (HBO)
• BRCA1 and BRCA2 Genes and Cancer Risk
• MSK-IMPACT: Next-Gen Tumor Profiling

About Selwyn Vickers

Selwyn M. Vickers, MD, FACS, is the president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and the incumbent of the Douglas A. Warner III Chair. He assumed the role on September 19, 2022.

Vickers is an internationally recognized pancreatic cancer surgeon, pancreatic cancer researcher, and pioneer in health disparities research. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. He has served on the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Board of Trustees and the Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees. Additionally, he has served as president of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract and the Southern Surgical Association. Vickers is the immediate past president of the American Surgical Association. He also continues to see patients.

In 1994, he joined the faculty of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) as an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery, where he was later appointed to professor and the John H. Blue Chair of General Surgery. In 2006, Vickers left UAB to become the Jay Phillips Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

Born in Demopolis, Alabama, Vickers grew up in Tuscaloosa and Huntsville. He earned baccalaureate and medical degrees and completed his surgical training (including a chief residency and surgical oncology fellowship) at the Johns Hopkins University. Vickers completed two postgraduate research fellowships with the National Institutes of Health and international surgical training at John Radcliffe Hospital of Oxford University, England.

Vickers and his wife, Janice, who is also from Alabama, have been married since 1988. They have four children.

Show Notes

• The ongoing threat and fear of cancer
• How Selwyn Vickers got into medicine
• Pancreatic cancer: Vickers’s expertise
• “We are in what’s somewhat coined the golden age of cancer research.”
• Sequencing the human genome
• “Is there a drug that might target the mutation that ended up creating your cancer?”
• Cancer as both a medical and existential diagnosis
• The revolution of precision oncology through human genome sequencing
• ”It takes a billion cells to have a one centimetre tumor.”
• Immunotherapy: checkpoint inhibition, CAR T-cell therapy, and v