"The assumption that CVRs were created because big pharma didn't want to take the risk is, honestly, a misnomer."

– Gino Santini, retired senior vice president of corporate strategy and business development at Eli Lilly and Co.

"Let's have a war on precancer."

– Jeffrey Jacob, CEO of Cancer Prevention Pharmaceuticals Inc.

"They're almost like small children: when you keep them apart they are quiet, but when you put them together . . ."

– Mace Rothenberg, Pfizer Inc.'s senior vice president of clinical development and medical affairs in the Oncology Business Unit, on how a mutation that places ALK and EML4 side by side results in activation of ALK, causing cancer