CUTTING EDGE

A chronicle of Roth’s career in cancer treatment research.

The author, a doctor with a more than 40-year history of laboratory and clinical research on lung and chest cancer treatments, takes readers on “adventures” through his professional and personal life in this memoir. Born into a Jewish family in Indiana in 1945, he attended Cornell University and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In 1973, he began a fellowship at the new department of surgical oncology at the University of California, Los Angeles. As a resident there, Roth received recognition and awards for his work in cancer treatment research. He married an immunology researcher in 1978; two years later, the power couple accepted positions at the National Cancer Institute. There, the author focused on developing cancer drugs that targeted cancer cells while preserving normal cells. In 1986, Roth, his wife, and their two young children moved to Houston, and the couple continued their work at MD Anderson. Roth and his team created programs to train and retain thoracic surgeons, and he conducted clinical trials involving chemotherapy, surgery, and gene therapy drugs. He eventually helped to establish Genprex, a biotechnology company specializing in gene therapy for cancer. As the author and his wife continued to reach new heights in their respective careers, they also managed to raise and spend quality time with their children. Roth details the difficulties of juggling traveling schedules, conferences, and the grant-funding process with family life. The narrative is infused with detailed explanations of the author’s and others’ groundbreaking scientific research in cancer treatment. His achievements, including co-developing the first gene therapy approved for human use, are admirable and impressive, and his narrative provides societal context with historical touchstones like the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. However, the overly technical language might lose layperson readers with lines like “Now we could test the combination of nanovesicle TUSC2 + anti-PD-1 in a human lung cancer lung metastases model that was resistant to checkpoint blockade.”

A thorough medical memoir that may prove too tediously technical for lay readers.