MD Anderson President Dr. Ronald DePinho Explains "Moon Shots" Program

NEWS92FM.com – MD Anderson Cancer Center announces an unprecedented assault on cancer.

“This organization is saving my life.” says Bree Sandlin. With a history of cancer in her family, Sandlin has been very conscientous about her health. Still it was a shock when two months ago, a self exam led to a diagnosis of an aggressive type of breast cancer. It’s called Triple negative and it is stage 3. That’s why Sandlin is looking forward to MD Anderson’s full court press.

You can hear our full audio report below or continue reading:

MD Anderson president Dr. Ronald DePinho explains the Moon Shots Program came about because of a perfect storm of advances. Game changing technology, knowledge of the disease and a staff of 19,000 with a single goal of fighting cancer make this the perfect time to attack from many angles such as prevention, detection, treatment and survivorship, ”It took this nation over a decade and $3.6 billion dollars in the 1990s to sequence one human genome. Today that can be done for a few hundred dollars and a few hours.” Dr. DepinHo says they will begin with the cancers that researchers know a lot about including lung, ovarian, breast cancers along with leukemia and melanoma.

Brian Ross began his battle with malignant melanoma 2 and a half years ago, ”For the first time in my life at 32 years old, i was looking at my mortality in the face.” At the time he had no insurance and lived in Austin. But he felt MD Anderson mirrored his personality, ”Not just sit here and get treated and wait for things to get worse but to push the envelope and continue to make progress and be aggressive.” That’s exactly what MD Anderson is doing.

For Ross, it offers something that’s often hard to come by, ”You realize that hope may mean something and you have something tangible to hold on to.”

For more information about this program, go to www.cancermoonshots.org .

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