MD Anderson Cancer Center marks 20th seminar in Aspen

This summer, MD Anderson celebrated 20 years of Making Cancer History® in Aspen. An educational seminar, July 23 at Aspen Meadows Resort’s Paepcke Auditorium, introduced MD Anderson President Peter WT Pisters, M.D., to the Aspen community. Presentations featured the latest on lung cancer and HPV-related cancers, and the benefits of integrative medicine in improving patients’ physical, mental and emotional well-being.

“The Aspen community has shown tremendous commitment to our mission to end cancer,” says Pisters. “For 20 years, the Making Cancer History Seminar has been a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with our friends in Aspen and share potentially lifesaving, practice-changing advances in cancer research, patient care, education and prevention.”

MD Anderson invited Aspen residents and summer visitors to start the day with an outdoor yoga activity before the seminar. Yoga for Health, led by Smitha Mallaiah, a mind-body intervention specialist in MD Anderson’s Department of Integrative Medicine, featured a gentle form of therapeutic yoga. Light, healthy refreshments awaited participants after the session.

That evening, longtime MD Anderson supporters Barbara and Gerald Hines hosted some 180 guests at a reception at their home on the banks of the Roaring Fork River. Attendees from Colorado, Texas and beyond mixed and mingled with MD Anderson leadership including seminar presenters John Heymach, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair, Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology; Erich Sturgis, M.D., professor, Head and Neck Surgery; Wenli Liu, M.D., associate professor, Integrative Medicine; and Pisters, who was joined by his wife, Katherine Pisters, M.D., professor, MD Anderson Oncology Program, Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital. The reception raised approximately $80,000 from ticket sales and a silent auction of one of Barbara’s original paintings.