In Treatment for Leukemia, Glimpses of the Future

[Part One of “Genetic Gamble: New Approaches to Fighting Cancer.”] After a Leukemia doctor and researcher develops the disease himself, he finds an effective treatment when his colleagues sequence his cancer genome:

“Dr. Wartman’s doctors realized then that their last best hope for saving him was to use all the genetic know-how and technology at their disposal.

“After their month of frantic work to beat cancer’s relentless clock, the group, led by Richard Wilson and Elaine Mardis, directors of the university’s genome institute, had the data. It was Aug. 31.

“The cancer’s DNA had, as expected, many mutations, but there was nothing to be done about them. There were no drugs to attack them.

“But the other analysis, of the cancer’s RNA, was different. There was something there, something unexpected.”

Published: Jul 7, 2012
Length: 10 minutes (2,697 words)

A New Treatment’s Tantalizing Promise Brings Heartbreaking Ups and Downs

[Part Two of “Genetic Gamble: New Approaches to Fighting Cancer.”] Genetic sequencing has led to promising new treatments for cancer, but we still have a ways to go:

“Scientists had compared the entire genetic sequences of the tumor cells invading her body with those in her healthy cells, searching for mutated tumor genes that could be thwarted by drugs approved for other cancers or even other diseases. That had led them to give her an expensive drug approved just a month earlier for melanoma patients. It had never been given to anyone with a blood cell cancer like hers. In theory, the drug should have killed her. Instead, it seemed to have halted or even reversed her cancer.

“But would it last? And what would it mean if it did not?”

Published: Jul 8, 2012
Length: 10 minutes (2,590 words)

A Life-Death Predictor Adds to a Cancer’s Strain

[Part Three of “Genetic Gamble: New Approaches to Fighting Cancer.”] A genetic test for people with eye melanomas reveals whether patients are likely to live or die with “uncanny precision”:

“The test identifies one of two gene patterns in eye melanomas. Almost everyone in Class 1 — roughly half of patients — is cured when the tumor is removed. As for those in Class 2, 70 to 80 percent will die within five years. Their cancers will re-emerge as growths in the liver. For them, there is no cure and no way to slow the disease.”

“No test has ever been so accurate in predicting cancer outcomes, researchers said.”

“The data from studies of the test are “unbelievably impressive,” said Dr. Michael Birrer, an ovarian cancer specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. ‘I would die to have something like that in ovarian cancer.'”

Published: Jul 9, 2012
Length: 10 minutes (2,531 words)

A Place Where Cancer Is the Norm

Some 90,000 patients and their families arrive in Houston at the world’s largest freestanding cancer hospital from around the world, often leaving behind jobs and stashing children with relatives for months. Some rent apartments or stay in mobile home parks near the hospital.

Published: Oct 24, 2009
Length: 11 minutes (2,838 words)