Dr. Francis Barany is Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Program of Biochemistry and Structural Biology at Cornell/Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City. Dr. Barany is also Director of Mutation Research at the Strang Cancer Prevention Center. He is program director of two multi-center NCI and NIAID grants to develop new methods of cancer and infectious disease detection.

Dr. Barany is best known for developing the ligase chain reaction and ligase detection reaction, and Universal DNA arrays for detection of genetic diseases and cancer-associated mutations. He was named to the “SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 50″ in 2004.

In our in-depth 7-12-07 interview, Dr. Barany discusses

• How to detect cancer while it’s hidden in the genome
• Comprehensive molecular profiling of colon tumors
• The universal array genomic chip which is used for the rapid and accurate detection of cancers and other diseases, especially breast and colon cancer
• How the ligase chain reaction detects single-base mutations
• Grand challenges in cancer therapy

Technorati Tags: cancer_research, genetic_counseling, genetic_testing, genomic_medicine

Dr. Charis Eng is Chair and Founding Director of the Genomic Medicine Institute at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Professor and Vice Chairman, Department of Genetics, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Dr. Eng’s research interests may be broadly characterized as clinical cancer genetics translational research. Her work on RET testing in multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 and the characterization of the widening clinical spectra of PTEN gene mutations have been acknowledged as the paradigm for the practice of clinical cancer genetics.

Dr. Eng has published over 230 peer-reviewed original papers in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Lancet, Nature Genetics, Nature.

In our wide-ranging SCIENCE AND SOCIETY interview, done on 8-9-07, Dr. Eng discusses

• What is genomic medicine?
• Personalized genetic risk assessment
• Genetic counseling
• Genetic testing and genetic screening

Technorati Tags: cancer_research, genetic_counseling, genetic_testing, genomic_medicine