A Conversation With Hensin Tsao, MD, PhD

Dr Hensin Tsao is a professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School and serves as the director of both the MGH Melanoma and Pigmented Lesion Center and the MGH Melanoma Genetics Program. He is also the head of the Skin Cancer Genetics Laboratory in the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at MGH, where he oversees a research program in melanoma genetics and therapeutics. Dr Tsao graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University with a degree in Biochemistry and English. In 1993, he graduated Alpha Omega Alpha from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons with an MD degree and Columbia University Graduate School of Arts of Sciences with a PhD degree in biophysics/biochemistry.

Q. What part of your work gives you the most pleasure?
A. Every week, I walk about 100 yards between my laboratory, where I live science in situ, and the dermatology clinic, where I see patients. While the physical trek is only so stimulating, the metaphorical journey between these two worlds has given me the greatest pleasure in my career. It has taken me to lands undisovered and vistas unimaginable.

Q. Are an understanding and appreciation of the humanities important in dermatology and why?
A. I was an English-biochemistry major at Brown University, so I naturally believe in the essentiality of the humanities in all endeavors. For me, science is one large metaphor trying to understand nature. Simultaneously, poetry (and I was a big fan of EE Cummings) is a series of experiments on words. Medicine itself, from the patient to the professor, is one long storytelling session.You better know how to enjoy it and make it interesting.

Q. Which patient had the most effect on your work and why?
A. Early in my career, I had a lovely middle-aged woman who had metastatic melanoma to the brain.At that time, we did not have any of the targeted agents or immune checkpoint drugs that we have today. She stopped coming in 1 day, and I naturally assumed the worst. About 6 months later, her teenaged son came in because he promised his mother (my patient) before she passed away that he would get routine skin checks. On that occasion, the teenager also told me his graduation story. He had taken some extra classes and had enough credits to graduate in December rather than June. Because both the school and his mother knew that she would not live much past Christmas, they set up an entire graduation ceremony for the son at home over Christmas so his mother could witness her last wish—to see him graduate. Shortly thereafter, she passed away. For many of us who work in the cancer field, death often seems like a theoretical construct—a surgical or medical battle against a faceless enemy. But it is not for the patient. It is a major war for a minor victory.

Q. What is the best piece of advice you have received and from whom?
A. The best piece of advice I ever received was from the smartest person I know, my wife. She is a brilliant dermatologist and an amazing doctor.When our kids were young, she would say,“It does not last forever, and it goes by fast.” Since then, we have worked around our family rather than forcing our family around work. With one in college and the other in high school, she was absolutely right ... as always.