BAR HARBOR Advances in genetic medicine are proceeding at such a rapid clip that solutions to some of humanitys most intractable medical problems could be present within the decade, Jackson Laboratory President and CEO Edison Liu, M.D. said Monday. Dr. Liu was speaking before a crowd of 150 gathered at the Bar Harbor Club for the annual meeting of the Mount Desert Island Hospital.

If we can push the envelope, we will cure cancer by the year 2020, Dr. Liu said in his keynote address. If Jackson Lab, on the little island on MDI, can win the Nobel Prize, we can beat breast cancer.

Advances in technology and in knowledge of the human genome have risen so much in the past decade that what we imagined just a few years ago is now reality, Dr. Liu said.

Today, we have high-resolution understanding of your genetics and your genome. We dont have to guess anymore, he said. We havent seen anything like this since the development of the motherboard in electronics.

In typical cancer treatment, a 30 percent response rate is considered a good outcome. But, with the growing ability to tailor drugs to each individual, the field of personalized medicine now promises the ability to increase that rate greatly, if not eliminate mortality from the disease altogether.

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Cancer Cure Close, Liu Says