Contributors

Contributors A seasoned hiker and skier who has visited most of the US National Parks, Keith Flaherty is no stranger to unfamiliar terrain. He entered college around the time of the molecular biology revolution in the early 1980s, and the new science entranced him. “It stuck with me as being an intriguing and fascinating level at which to try to understand human biology,” he says. In medical school he started to “think about patients and diseases

Written byThe Scientist
| 2 min read

Register for free to listen to this article
Listen with Speechify
0:00
2:00
Share

A seasoned hiker and skier who has visited most of the US National Parks, Keith Flaherty is no stranger to unfamiliar terrain. He entered college around the time of the molecular biology revolution in the early 1980s, and the new science entranced him. “It stuck with me as being an intriguing and fascinating level at which to try to understand human biology,” he says. In medical school he started to “think about patients and diseases in a molecular way.” That’s what attracted him to oncology, and, in particular, to finding cellular targets for curing the disease. Understanding cancer at that level was rather unexplored territory, and he has continued pushing into the blank spots on the map as the director of Development Therapeutics at Massachusetts General Hospital. “There is no area that I don’t find interesting…It’s what gets me out of bed in the morning,” he says. Flaherty discusses recent ...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

The Scientist Logo
Receive full access to digital editions of The Scientist, as well as TS Digest, feature stories, more than 35 years of archives, and much more!
Already a member? Login Here
Image of a woman with her hands across her stomach. She has a look of discomfort on her face. There is a blown up image of her stomach next to her and it has colorful butterflies and gut bacteria all swarming within the gut.
November 2025, Issue 1

Why Do We Feel Butterflies in the Stomach?

These fluttering sensations are the brain’s reaction to certain emotions, which can be amplified or soothed by the gut’s own “bugs".

View this Issue
An image of a DNA sequencing spectrum with a radial blur filter applied.

A Comprehensive Guide to Next-Generation Sequencing

Integra Logo
Golden geometric pattern on a blue background, symbolizing the precision, consistency, and technique essential to effective pipetting.

Best Practices for Precise Pipetting

Integra Logo
Olga Anczukow and Ryan Englander discuss how transcriptome splicing affects immune system function in lung cancer.

Long-Read RNA Sequencing Reveals a Regulatory Role for Splicing in Immunotherapy Responses

Pacific Biosciences logo
Research Roundtable: The Evolving World of Spatial Biology

Research Roundtable: The Evolving World of Spatial Biology

Products

Labvantage Logo

LabVantage Solutions Awarded $22.3 Million U.S Customs and Border Protection Contract to Deliver Next-Generation Forensic LIMS

The Scientist Placeholder Image

Evosep Unveils Open Innovation Initiative to Expand Standardization in Proteomics

OGT logo

OGT expands MRD detection capabilities with new SureSeq Myeloid MRD Plus NGS Panel