Interview: Nanomedicine in Oncology: Miniaturized Means to An Enormous End

Abstract

Ralph Weissleder and Cesar Castro from Harvard Medical School speak to Cara Sutton, Assistant Commissioning Editor Ralph Weissleder attended the University of Freiburg and the University of Heidelberg (Germany), where he received his doctoral degrees. Prof. Weissleder completed a radiology residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MA, USA), Harvard Medical School (MA, USA). He is currently a Professor of Radiology and Systems Biology, both at Harvard Medical School. He is the Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Systems Biology. Prof. Weissleder is the principal investigator of several large federally funded research studies, and is the author of more than 600 peer-reviewed published papers, 100 review papers, over 30 patents and several major textbooks. Cesar M Castro received his medical degree from the University of California – San Francisco (CA, USA) where he also pursued an internal medicine residency. He completed a joint hematology and oncology fellowship between the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital. He holds a Master’s in Medical Sciences in clinical investigation from Harvard Medical School. Dr Castro is currently an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a clinician investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr Castro has extensive experience pursuing nanoparticle research at the National Cancer Institute. His current research interests entail development and application of nanosensing and molecular imaging tools to augment cancer care through proof-of-concept and early phase studies. He is a principal investigator on a couple of large funded research projects and currently holds a career development award from the National Cancer Institute.