Every cancer breakthrough begins years before it offers patients new hope. Our series Saved by Science takes you inside MSK’s world class research labs, where you’ll see patients meet the scientists whose discoveries not only changed their lives, but are transforming cancer care for patients around the world.
It's shrunk down so small you can barely see it.
This shows that 70% reduction that you've had in your cancer.
Wow. That's insane. In like, what, eight months? Yeah.
You just gave me a couple pills to take, and this is happening.
My husband had just passed, and I had three teenage kids at home. So I knew I needed to beat it.
Ellen underwent a large surgery to try to remove as much of the cancer as possible.
She then went through multiple different lines of our standard of care therapy.
But despite all of this, her cancer continued to grow and progress.
The discoveries that lead to those better treatments start in the laboratory.
We have a surprise for you today also.
Oh, really?
Hi, Dr. Solit!
Great to see you.
I’d like to introduce you to Ellen.
Dr. Solit’s lab was the first one to describe the mutations in your type of cancer that led to these drugs that you're now on today.
It's wonderful to meet you.
We’re going to show you the process of how we analyze the tumors to identify mutations to know how best to treat patients.
Okay, let's do it.
The first step is to take the tumor that was removed at the time you had surgery.
We sometimes only have a very tiny piece of the tumor.
What we've been spending the past two decades doing is cataloging what are those different mutations that cause different types of cancer.
It’s amazing what science can do.
We need to know for each patient why they got cancer, what's driving their individual tumor type, so we can match them up with the best drug.
We now do this analysis on over 18,000 patients a year.
Wow.
The DNA libraries get loaded onto these machines that generate billions of DNA sequencing pieces of data.
Oh, wow.
I'm a part of something that is so big, much bigger than myself.
It feels great to know that I may be contributing to helping save other people's lives.
I am very grateful for all the work that all of you have put into it because, as a result, you've extended my life.