Prof Guilford is a biochemist and former James Cook Fellow who directs the university's Centre for Translational Cancer Research.
He was last month awarded the Beavan Medal, the top Health Research Council medal, for his translational research, including ground-breaking work in hereditary diffuse gastric cancer.
He has also helped develop a revolutionary, non-invasive bladder cancer diagnostic tool, Cxbladder.
''I think we are moving rapidly to a world in which cancer will be regarded as a chronic but not necessarily lethal disease, like diabetes is now,'' he says.
''Patients diagnosed with advanced disease will require multiple rounds of treatment and vigilant surveillance but the risk of death will drop away.
''Today's primary school kids will be part of this new world.
''There will be no magic bullet, however. It will come about slowly through incremental changes in each different cancer.''
In some respects, the back of the cancer problem had already been broken.
''We have a fairly good understanding of the disease's underpinning mechanisms and an increasingly sophisticated grasp of the types of drugs we need to treat it with.''
But researchers were probably only about 10% of the way towards having all the drugs needed to deal with cancer's ''different and changing forms''.
And, unfortunately, drug development was ''expensive and slow, with each drug or drug combination requiring large, rigorous clinical trials to prove efficacy and safety''.
''New drugs alone cannot be the answer, partly because the cost of ongoing cancer treatment will be very, very expensive.
''Therefore, it will be important that as many cancers as possible are found early, at a stage when a cure can be effected by surgery alone, or perhaps surgery plus radiotherapy.
''If three-quarters of cases can be cured without drug therapy, then we should have the financial resources to throw the kitchen sink at the remaining quarter.
''This means that we will need to keep researching new diagnostic methods and then, armed with good specific, non-invasive tests, make cancer checkups routine and effective.''
Researchers at the Centre for Translational Cancer Research were intent on applying new insights in cell biology to ''pressing health problems''.
Some drugs to combat breast and stomach cancers had already been identified and were ''working well in the lab''.
''We now need to identify those which will also work in the real world,'' Prof Guilford said.
''This involves selecting the drugs which are most robust to other common mutations that occur in breast and stomach cancers, and then making sure they are safe to use.''
This process could take five to 10 years.
Lobular breast cancer was harder to detect by mammography than other forms of breast cancer, so was often diagnosed later, he said.
There were 400,000 new cases per year of diffuse gastric cancer internationally, including about 150 in New Zealand.
Prof Guilford last month received a $200,000 grant from the Breast Cancer Research Partnership, which includes the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation, for research that aims to develop better chemotherapy to attack breast cancer.
Prof Guilford is leading a two-year project aimed at achieving ''lethal targeting'' of lobular breast cancer, the second-most common form of the disease.
Healthy cells produce E-cadherin, a protein that suppresses tumour growth, but the gene that produces E-cadherin is often ''switched off'' in cancer cells.
Prof Guilford and his team are hunting for compounds that will destroy cells lacking E-cadherin, but not healthy cells with normal levels of the protein.
A new drug could begin clinical trials within five years.
The death of his mother, Patricia Guilford, from breast cancer in 1998 had contributed to his interest in improving breast cancer therapies.
Prof Guilford said his research had started in the mid-1990s when ''we found that inherited stomach cancer was caused by mutations in the E-cadherin gene''.
The early priority was to test people from stomach cancer families to see if they carried the mutation. Carriers could then get timely surgical treatment.
This had saved many lives, but relied on ''very aggressive surgery''- a gastrectomy.
''We've now moved on to the next phase, which is to develop drugs which prevent these cancers developing inthe first place.''
Prof Guilford was born in Christchurch and grew up in Oamaru. As a youngster he wanted to be ''a fisherman, lawyer, chemist, doctor, gardener, then eventually a molecular biologist,'' he said.
What does he do to relax?
''Trout fishing, beer club, climbing, diving and trying to keep up with the kids skiing.''
• More information about the Centre for Translational Cancer Research can be found at www.otago.ac.nz/ctcr.
SNAPSHOT
Parry Guilford, 54
Occupation: University of Otago cancer geneticist
Qualifications: BSc, MSc Otago University; PhD Cambridge University
Postdoctoral research: Pasteur Institute, Paris, where he searched for genes that caused inherited deafness
Other employers: DSIR, HortResearch, Pacific Edge Ltd (co-founder)
Proudest moment: Contributing to the discovery of the gene for inherited stomach cancer
THE CHALLENGE: REDUCING BURDEN OF CANCER
What is your research about?
Developing new diagnostic tests and drugs to reduce the impact of cancer.
Why is it important?
Too many people don't get a good shot at life.
Most interesting aspect of your research?
Understanding cancer's vulnerabilities.
In what way is your research unique?
Most cancer drug development is aimed at blunting cancer's strengths.
Our approach is to hunt around and find its weaknesses.
How common?
There are about 3000 new cases of breast cancer in this country each year, including about 250 new cases of lobular breast cancer, the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation says.
