For those who have spent their entire careers in oncology, cancer is our world. We see it as something to be studied, understood, controlled, cured, or prevented.
But for everyone else, cancer is something lurking in the shadows, cloaked in mystery and fear.
This year, the lives of 1.2 million Americans will be turned upside-down by a simple phrase, “You have cancer.” We all know someone who has gone through this: Friends, family, and in some cases, even ourselves.
Despite tremendous advances over the past few decades, too many people still view cancer as a death sentence.
This is the reason why the first exhibit of the Museum of Medicine and Biomedical Discovery will be “Cancer: From Despair to Discovery to Triumph.”
In it, we will invite visitors to come on a journey that will demystify cancer by exploring advances in the scientific, medical, and personal dimensions of the disease and see how they are inextricably linked.
There are so many excellent educational resources that already exist about cancer; why do we need another one?
The reason is that people are looking for more than a source of information. They are looking for context, a way to understand the disease as it affects them, and something that acknowledges the near-universal sense of being taken on a journey they didn’t plan to make or want to be on.
Our goal is to present the topic in a way that is engaging, informative, and memorable—one that connects with visitors both on an intellectual and emotional level.
Here’s how we’ll do that:
Upon entering the exhibit, visitors will be met by holograms of people of all ages and races describing their hopes, dreams, and aspirations before their lives were changed forever by a single word: “cancer.” They’ll describe how they reacted and the first questions that came to mind.
Guests will then move into the next section that will address the question, “What is cancer?” Through the use of 360° projection, they’ll be plunged into a cell to see how damage to DNA that isn’t repaired or lethal to the cell can confer a growth advantage over normal cells. But that alone isn’t sufficient. The cell has to acquire other attributes as described in Hanahan and Weinberg’s seminal 2000 article and those that followed.1,2
Visitors will be given the opportunity to explore each of the hallmarks and enabling characteristics of cancer through interactive displays to see how each contributes to the survival and spread of the cancer. An important and all too often overlooked aspect of this process will also be addressed: how avoidance of known carcinogens, vaccination against cancer-causing infections, and early detection, before the transformed cell has acquired many of cancer’s most deadly attributes, increases the likelihood of cure.
The history of cancer treatment is a long and storied one—but most visitors aren’t historians. They will be people whose lives have been touched by cancer, more interested in learning about what therapies are available now.
In “When the Body Needs Help in Fighting Cancer,” the visitor will learn about the vast array of modalities currently used to treat people with cancer: beyond surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy and including targeted therapy, immunotherapy, and cellular therapy, as well as symptom-directed and end-of-life care. This section will be self-guided, as some visitors will be more interested in one area than another. It will also use AI to tailor explanations to each visitor’s level of knowledge, comfort, and understanding.
Each modality will include “Pivotal Moments” that will describe—or have the researchers themselves describe—the question or problem they were studying, how their research led them in a new direction, what they discovered, and how they felt when they realized that they had made a breakthrough discovery.
In some way, each of us has contributed to the progress we’ve made against cancer. But most visitors won’t have the years of experience that we draw on to gain perspective on how far the field has come over the last 75, 25, or even five years.
In the “Patient Experience Time Machine,” visitors will have the opportunity to do just that.
Visitors will encounter avatars of the same person describing their diagnosis, treatment, and outcome with the same stage and type of cancer in three distinct historical time periods. This will highlight how advances in cancer diagnosis, treatment, and prevention have led to vastly improved outcomes and survival. They will also hear from individual patients whose own course of treatment was impacted by a medical advance while they were receiving treatment.
The emergence of a new technology or platform has often been the catalyst for key advances against cancer.
In “Enabling Technologies: Opening the Door for Progress,” technical experts and discussion facilitators will walk visitors through game-changing technologies like DNA sequencing, robotics, and advances in bioengineering where they can see how the emergence of new tools provided new insights into cancer etiology, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.
The final section of the exhibit will feature “Challenges We Still Need to Overcome.” Through the use of self-directed, interactive displays, visitors will be able to take a deep dive into areas as diverse as exploring a scientific quandary, understanding why a target is considered “undruggable,” designing and conducting a clinical development plan in a rare disease or small subset of patients, or ensuring access to cancer prevention and treatment services in an underserved area.
Visitors will then be asked to prioritize or “fund” those that matter most to them. By doing so, they will gain insight into the many competing priorities that exist in this (and any) field of scientific or medical exploration, and we will gain insight into what matters most to the general public.
The success of this exhibit will be measured in several ways: Did it answer the biggest questions on guests’ minds? Did visitors gain a better understanding of how research drives progress against cancer? Did the exhibit inspire and ignite interest in young people to consider careers in science and medicine?
The feedback we obtain from this initial exhibit will help us determine how well we achieved our goal and how to improve the experience in the future.
Our plan is to have this first exhibit displayed in an existing science or medical museum and represents the first of a three-phase plan.
The second phase involves creating multiple exhibits that will travel to different museums, science centers, and public venues that will explore other aspects of the science/medicine interface using other, complementary technologies.
The final phase will be to create a physical home for the museum that will be able to offer enhanced immersive and interactive experiences at scale to thousands of visitors each year.
The most urgent need we have at this time is obtaining sufficient capital to put these plans into motion. Contributions of any size from individuals, institutions, and organizations will help bring the Museum of Medicine and Biomedical Discovery to life and demonstrate the cancer community’s commitment to improving public awareness of how progress in cancer—and all of medicine—is made. Your donation now can help make this vision a reality.
References
- Hanahan D, Weinberg RA. The hallmarks of cancer. Cell 2000;100: 57–70.
- Hanahan D: Hallmarks of cancer: new dimensions. Cancer Discovery 2022; 12:31-46.
Dr. Mace Rothenberg is president and executive director of the Museum of Medicine and Biomedical Discovery. MMBD is a not-for-profit, 501(c)3 designated organization. More information is available at https://mmbd.org.
