Alice Pons, a Kimmel Cancer Center research nurse for 10 years, is among the nurses who bridge the laboratory and clinic, delivering first-in-human drugs to cancer patients. Every patient receiving a new drug on a clinical trial is assigned a research nurse who ensures that the very detailed and complex plan put in place to study experimental new treatments is followed so that new drugs can be safely explored in patients. This includes determining the best dose and monitoring, reporting, and managing side effects. “I see much hope on the horizon,” says Pons. “There is so much progress being made in the laboratory and in the clinic. We learn something with every study.”