“There’s real hope that by the time I finish doing research and teaching at Princeton, we won’t worry about cancer as much. I think we truly can get there one day,” Yibin Kang told The Daily Princetonian.

Kang is a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and co-founder of the Princeton branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. His lab researches the molecular mechanisms of metastasis, the spread of cancer cells from a localized site to other parts of the body, in addition to understanding how and when the cancer cell acquired that ability.

“If [the cancer] is localized in the breast, you do surgery and it’s gone and you don’t worry about it. But unfortunately, about 20 to 30 percent of patients develop metastasis, which is called stage four cancer, and it’s much harder to treat and cure,” Kang said.

Kang’s lab is predominantly focused on breast cancer, one of the most frequent types of cancer in the United States, with around 40,000 women dying from breast cancer and 200,000 diagnosed each year.