Douglas Yee, MD, explores IGF system and breast cancer

In his spare time, he rides a tandem bike with his wife, enjoys inline skating and other outdoor activities.

Douglas Yee, MD, is director of the Masonic Cancer Center, professor in the department of medicine and John H. Kersey Chair in Cancer Research at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

In his professional life, he is particularly interested in understanding the contribution of insulin-like growth factor action to breast cancer and targeting key components of the IGF system to improve treatment.

Yee said, as a physician, splitting your professional time between laboratory investigation and clinical care enhances your skill and expertise in both areas. In addition, he stresses the importance of how research will inform the health care reform process, including participation of patients in the research process.

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not practicing medicine?

I like to be outdoors. My wife and I have a tandem bike, so we try to ride as much as we can. The Twin Cities are great for riding.

Travel is always fun too. That’s one of the good things about oncology, we have many opportunities to see the world.

Also, I am an inline skater I’ve done the Northshore Inline marathon in Minnesota for the past 10 years. I try, when I have any spare time, to train for that.

If you had not gone into hematology/oncology or medicine, what would you have done?

I would have become involved in some aspect of biomedical science. When I was an undergraduate, I was interested in the concept of how our genes interact with our environment and in how human genetics could potentially affect people’s quality of life and traits, including behavior traits.

I probably didn’t pursue human genetics largely because the tools weren’t quite there yet; DNA biochemistry was in its infancy and there was some public opposition to the growing ability to manipulate DNA. In retrospect, that was a little narrow-sighted because the tools are there now, and that field has exploded and really informed us.

Douglas Yee

Also, when I was undergraduate, I was a biological anthropology major, which is basically the study of evolution. I thought it was fascinating how we human beings have been shaped by our interactions with each other and the environment. It was somewhat related to my interest in human genetics. An alternative career would have been to be a biological anthropologist, but there is not a huge calling for that.

What would you consider one of your biggest successes in your specialty?

For me, it was the understanding that drugs or strategies could be targeted based on observations that were made in the laboratory. My particular interest, when I finished my training, was in the IGF receptor. My colleagues and I had published the idea that this would be a good target. It was gratifying to see that something I wrote as a fellow–targeting the IGF receptor in Ewing’s sarcoma–would gain attention 20 years later. The success was that something hypothesized a long time ago was finally validated in a trial.

We still have a long way to go to understand how to manipulate this signaling pathway, but it is exciting to be able to contribute to the field.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

My first faculty job was at University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and my boss at that time was the late William L. McGuire, MD. Professionally, he taught me a corollary lesson; you could ask proteins stored in tissues a “question,” and come up with an “answer.”

At the time, Bill was particularly interested in why some women recur from their disease after breast cancer surgery and some do not. One of his significant achievements was working with Dennis Slamon, MD, PhD, showing that HER-2 gene amplification was one of the factors that related to poor outcome. Dennis was one of the founders of pushing the drug trastuzumab (Herceptin, Genentech) forward.

Career-wise, I learned from Bill that, as a team member, you should encourage and foster excellence in everyone. Make sure your own career doesn’t interfere with the careers of other people. Specifically, it’s important that young faculty develop their career path in a way that benefits them and the group they work with.

Bill fostered the idea that everybody should be internationally recognized for the thing they do best. He recognized that if the group does well, that reflects well on all of us. Enjoy your colleague’s success. That was very important to him.

Who do you consider a mentor?

One of the reasons I became interested in cancer was having the opportunity to work at the NCI in Bethesda during the summer when I was an undergraduate. I worked directly for Joan Bull, MD, and worked in parallel with Marc Lippman, MD. I returned to the NCI for my fellowship; Marc was the head of the breast cancer section in medical oncology.

I learned at the NCI that you could create better therapies if you understood the biology of the disease. They also taught me that, as a physician, you could have a life that is partially laboratory investigation and partially clinical care, and, by doing both, you would enhance your skill and expertise.

They taught me that having that kind of career is fun, and this idea contributed to my overall career development.

What do you think will have the biggest influence on hematology/oncology in the next 10 years?

Health care reform and research funding will be linked and critical. In order to provide better and cheaper health care for patients with cancer, research has to be funded at the same time policy changes are made.

Another major influence will be the engagement of the public, particularly patients who unfortunately have cancer or are at risk for cancer. We need to emphasize the importance of their participation in the research process; both as a way to provide better therapy for their disease and to further our goals of reducing cancer’s impact.

Currently, we have the tools to take a single snapshot (gene expression profiling, comparative genomic hybridization, deep sequencing, etc.) of a very complex process and making statements about how a tumor will behave and respond to specific treatments. I would hope that in the next 10 years, we develop more dynamic measurements that do not require invasive biopsy.

A big part of that is imaging. I jokingly tell people I would love to have the scanner that Dr. McCoy had in Star Trek. You could scan it over someone and it would tell you all the answers. Essentially, the point is to get to the complexity of cancer in a noninvasive way.

What is the last book you read?

I just finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It’s a book about how the HeLa cell was created. The HeLa cell has been the workhorse cell of biomedical science.

The book is great because it talks about the patient and her family, the legacy of her providing her cells to science, and the ethics regarding these types of “donations.” It brings up many different questions about science in general.

The book I’m currently reading is Anthill, a work of fiction written by the biologist Edward O. Wilson. Maybe I am reading too much science!

What was the last art collection you saw?

My wife and I were in Madrid about a month and a half ago and got to see much of the Prado Museum collection. It holds amazing Francisco Goya and Diego Velázquez collections, which were great to see.

The nearby Museo Reina Sofia also holds the Picasso masterpiece Guernica, his commentary on the Spanish Civil War. It’s one thing to see the reproduction, but it’s quite something else to see the original.

What was the last CD you bought?

Even though I was raised in the era now called “classic rock,” I’m a current fan of indie rock. The last CD I bought was Surfer Blood. It’s kind of a retro Beach Boys. The second to last CD I bought was Heaven is Whenever by The Hold Steady. I still buy a lot of CDs. I don’t like downloading. Often times, people are trying to make a statement with the whole output of the CD and something is lost in buying just one song.

What kind of diet and exercise regimen do you have?

I’ve learned that as you get older — every 10 years — you start gaining weight for no apparent reason. My wife and I try to go to a personal trainer at least once or twice a week. We also do a lot of outdoor, aerobic-type things. I try to eat better, but I’m a child of the United States in the 1960s, so I still have comfort food cravings that aren’t very healthy.

What is your favorite travel destination?

A little island in the Caribbean called Anguilla, because it is a place where you don’t have to think about anything or do anything. My wife always says we should retire there, but I don’t know if I could not think about or not do anything forever, but it is a nice getaway.

I also like New York City. Also, I still have family in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Sometimes I get back there; those are two amazing cities.

What is your favorite restaurant?

On one hand, I’m nondenominational. I like little, chef-inspired places. The Twin Cities is a great place for those restaurants; my favorite near the University campus is Restaurant Alma. I’m also perfectly happy at a decent buffet.

But, if I had to name one of the more impressive places, it would be a place La Côte d’Or in Saulieu, a Michelin three-star restaurant. My wife and I went there on a bicycle trip for our 25th anniversary and it was memorable. The room was beautiful, the food was fabulous and the service was great. I took a picture of every course!