Hoping for a cure — and a little respect

In a culture that often seems to worship celebrity over accomplishment, “Today” looks this morning at a day in the life of one of the most brilliant and respected scientists in the world. Bert Vogelstein is recognized in the field for making some of the most pivotal discoveries in cancer genetics and colon cancer diagnostics, and he continues to pursue novel therapies to combat the disease. “Today” host Katie Couric talks with Vogelstein as part of a special series called “Confronting Colon Cancer.”

For Dr. Bert Vogelstein, a day at the office is anything but ordinary. “I used to wake up at 4:45, but one of the post-doctorate students realized that 4:44 was a much better time to wake up because it's symmetrical and scientists love symmetry. It sounded like a good idea to me, and so I started waking up one minute earlier,” says Vogelstein, laughing.

Vogelstein hopes the early bird will catch the worm and someday help cure cancer too.

His quest began when he was in pediatrics. Seeing sick children in the cancer ward of the hospital made him want one thing — answers.

“It was so sad because, not only did these beautiful children have cancer, but we as physicians — this was back in the ’70s — we really had no idea of what was going on,” says Vogelstein.

He adds, “Parents would ask us, ‘Why does my child have cancer?’ Truth of the matter is, we didn't know. We didn't know what caused it. So, how can you be hopeful about ever curing something or getting rid of it or preventing it if you have no idea of what's behind it?”

For the past 20 years he and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins-Kimmel Cancer Center have been specializing in colon cancer. First, what causes it.

Confronting Colon Cancer Learn more about Katie Couric's special series on "Today": What it's like to be a cancer survivor Katie Couric's personal message Get tested if you're over 50 More women diagnosed in 2005 State insurance coverage map (.PDF) Test your knowledge of colon cancer Colon cancer online resources A day in the life of a cancer researcher VIDEO: Segments from the 'Today' show More cancer news from MSNBC.com

“Our laboratory has been trying to discover the causes of colon cancer. We're basically geneticists, we study genes. Our hypothesis was that colon cancer is caused by a series of several different mistakes, mutations, alterations,” says Vogelstein.

Translation? Mutation.

“Mutation equals mistake equals defect. Genes have sequences, right? The alphabet for genes is only four letters. It's A, C, G, T.  So all a gene is, there's a string of these As, Cs, Gs and Ts — maybe 10,000 of them and a mutation means that one of those strings of letters, say a G, is changed to an A. That's it,” says Vogelstein.

Got that? Vogelstein and his colleagues are now working on a new DNA stool test that will hopefully encourage even more people to get screened for colon cancer.

Vogelstein says, “At this point it's still research. But there are a lot of promising results if it could be implemented. Then you can spare people a lot of sickness and, hopefully, death.”

What is a day in the life of one of the most brilliant cancer researchers in the world like?  He’s in the office at 5:30 a.m. and begins to prepare for an intense day of discovery. He also gets ready for the army of post-doctoral students who are his soldiers in the war on cancer.

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