Princeton physicist Robert AustinCOURTESY OF ROBERT AUSTINCancer mortality rates have, on average, not budged for the past 40 years, despite billions of dollars in annual research expenditures. Looking for fresh insights into cancer research, the National Institutes for Health in 2009 launched 12 physical science oncology centers at universities around the United States. The funders hope cancer research, which has benefited from tools made by physicists, can also benefit from physicists’ unique perspective on cancer as a physical system.
Among the directors of these centers, Princeton University’s Robert Austin holds perhaps the most controversial perspectives on cancer. Austin, a trained physicist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, believes we might have cancer for a reason. It’s a tradeoff, he says, for the rapid evolution our species has leveraged to become the dominant force on the planet. He also suggests that cancer might act as a form of global population control, possibly serving to increase species fitness.
One of the main challenges facing cancer researchers, Austin said, is a tumor’s ability to evolve resistance to chemotherapy. He thinks this trait shares many characteristics with antibiotic resistance among bacteria. To that end, his lab builds specially designed microenvironments to study how antibiotic resistance ...
