And its really neat when that happens, when you have connections that are made between the people that are working on some specific disease and those building up the general store house of knowledge. That is extremely gratifying. Basic research is just a matter of putting the bricks on. In applied research, you could run into a point where a piece of information is just lacking because the basic research hasn't happened yet. And you may not be able to fix it.
Cancer research is a classic example.
Cancer is complicated, it is hundreds of diseases and yet the major treatment is still chemotherapy and radiation. These methods have been around for 3o - 40 years. The way they work is based on a fundamental understanding of what a cancer is. Cancer is a set of cells that are dividing when they are not supposed to. Chemotherapy and radiation work to keep cells from dividing.