Student Elana Simon sent the following message to the White House email list today, sharing how Precision Medicine -- a cutting-edge new way of treating disease -- changed her life, and how it could change the lives of millions more Americans.
Didn't get the email? Sign up to receive messages like this one here.
Fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma.
It's not a term that any kid typically knows, or should ever have to learn first-hand. But when I turned 12 years old, that was my diagnosis -- and it became a defining part of my life.
It's a specific kind of liver cancer that affects children. It's rare -- you don't see it in your average patient. So I knew, even then, that it would take something more than a generic treatment to cure this unique disease.
So I got to work. And thanks to incredible technological advances and the help of a community of scientists and fibrolamellar patients like me, I was able to identify the change in the DNA that leads to this kind of cancer. Rather than focusing broadly on all liver cancer, I examined a precise patient group -- which allowed for such a precise discovery.
Today, I'm 19 years old, in college, and in remission.
There's a name for the approach we used. It's called "Precision Medicine" -- an approach that uses data-driven treatments that are unique to your own body. It's a proven way to treat more difficult diseases. And it's a field of medicine the President's 2016 budget is investing in.
No comments:
Post a Comment