Portrait of a leader in immunotherapeutics

It’s the question that every grade school kid has to answer at some point or another—“What do you want to be when you grow up?” My mom still has the second grade paper on which I first wrote down that I wanted to be a “physician scientist.” I’m quite certain that I probably didn’t know exactly what a physician scientist was at the time. I certainly didn’t know any physician scientists personally, nor was I exposed to academic environments in the tiny Minnesota town in which I grew up. All I’m certain of, was at that time, I liked reading about science. Unfortunately, I soon came to know the medical profession all too personally.