Cancer as a chronic illness
Paul Ch’en reached the frontier of cancer care by an unusually long road. He was a biochemist first, then took a PhD in cancer immunology — working on cancer vaccines — did a postdoc at Oxford and Imperial, and only then went into medicine, training as an oncologist. He is, in his own shorthand, “MD-PhD.” Today he works with the Oxford Longevity Project.
What sets him apart is the holistic turn. In the transition into clinical work he also trained in cognitive behavioural therapy and Western acupuncture — deliberately, in the hope of helping cancer patients as whole people, at the interface between the hard science and everything the science leaves out.
His big-picture view belongs on the Bridge of Prevention. He suspects cancer will become steadily more treatable and manageable — pointing to how far we’ve already come with cancers like prostate. Underneath it sits the idea of tumour immunosurveillance: in a sense we all carry cancer all the time, held in check by the immune system. The task is to keep catching it and keep tipping that balance.
And he sees a deep symmetry. The way we manage the chronic illnesses of ageing, he argues, is, to a degree, no different from how we’re learning to manage cancer — as something to live alongside rather than simply defeat. It makes his work a win-win: what he learns from the longevity side he takes straight back to his day-to-day patients, and vice versa.
