Personalized Medicine Gains Popularity

Bob Gibbs and Donette Pelletier both have amazing stories due to personalized medicine.

Donette Pelletier has been fighting colon cancer for five years. She had a recurrence in 2008, and at that point, the cancer had spread throughout her abdomen.

Pelletier said, "I went to quite a few doctors in quite a few different states trying to find someone who could help me more than tell me go home, take a chemotherapy, and basically good luck."

"I can't accept that! I'm a single mom, I'm 44 years old I will not accept that answer!" added Pelletier, in reaction to that advice.

Donette finally got a different answer at Champions Biotechnology in Baltimore, a company approaching cancer care in a radically different way.

Chairman Dr. David Sidransky says they actually implant living samples of a patient's tumor on a genetically altered mouse. Once that tumor begins to grow, the research team tests different chemotherapies to find the most powerful weapon.

Dr. Sidransky says, "The benefit, of course, is that if there's toxicity, which are very common bad side effects with cancer drugs, you can avoid them by taking the right drugs."

In Donettes' case, a drug that had previously been used in a chemo-cocktail was the one she really needed, by itself. When her doctor in Alabama was skeptical, she found another.

"The other physician did try the therapy, and she ended up having a 15-month remission where the tumor shrunk and she did great for 15 months. She is still doing well, we found another solution that she is on right now and this was about two years ago," said Dr. Sidransky.

Read Full Article

Source: WUSA9 - Washington, DC