Billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is half doctor, half entrepreneur. (Forbes has him as the wealthiest American in the healthcare industry, worth $12 billion. Living in LA, he’s also a minority owner of the Lakers.) With his cancer genome sequencing project, he’s trying to give people a better shot at a better outcome if diagnosed with cancer. He wants to disrupt the traditional way we treat cancer. During an interview with CBS 60 Minutes medical investigative reporter Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Dr. Soon-Shiong showed how. On a big screen showing microscopic footage, Soon-Shiong points out to Gupta one cell “gobbling up” a cancer cell. Gupta summarizes: “So, we’re literally watching cancer cells die.” Exactly, says Soon-Shiong.
Of course managing cancer–trying to turn cancer into a chronic disease isn’t easy. “I think there’s just too much hard, complex science that has to be done before this is state of the art. But it’s a very cool idea for the future,” says Dr. Derek Raghavan, president of the Levine Cancer Institute, about Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s cancer genome sequencing project. Watch both interviews on 60 Minutes on Sunday, December 7 at 7pm on CBS.
