Cancer Practitioner Personal Statement

During my freshman year in high school, a highly malignant tumor was discovered on the back of my cranium. It had eroded my skull and was starting to leak into my brain. It was removed with no complications, but I was required to visit MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX for several years to check for any recurrence. Through this experience, I witnessed the fragility of life. A spark was ignited in me to pursue medicine and discover ways we could prevent cancer and other illnesses. I was immersed into the hospital setting and shadowed physicians of all types to find my possible niche. By studying the sciences, I feel I can have the greatest advantage in empowering myself and others. The STARS program would be crucial in allowing me to

Development in personalized medicine could greatly influence the current standards of diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. The Human Genome Project guaranteed a revolution in the individualized treatment concept. Just as a person’s characteristics are unique to their genomic information, the origin to a disease could be correlated with the genomic sequences unique to that person. An advantage of such a therapeutic approach is diagnosing the possible susceptibility to a disease and preventing this outcome by providing drug therapies much before its outbreak.

Everyone hears the word “Cancer” and automatically thinks death? Imagine being told you have cancer a month before Christmas and having to start chemotherapy right away. That was me at age 16 barely a junior in High School, they say high school is supposed to be a great experience. And it was at the beginning which was my freshman and sophomore year. I was that girl athlete with lots of friends who went day by day not caring about my health I would eat lots of junk food and stay up late at night. I come from a Hispanic family single parent my mom and 4 siblings 3 girls and one boy. Two had already gotten married and there was only 3 left at home including me. My mom would work out in the fields so sometimes she 'd come home late, therefore

Ever since my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer in when I was in middle school, I’ve developed an interest in medicine and the treatment of diseases. Then, last summer, my Chinese teacher was diagnosed with the same type of lung cancer. What I found peculiar is that both of these important women in my life were non-smokers and Chinese; so perhaps this type of cancer is race-associated. A recent publication from the National Cancer Institute seems to back my hypothesis, suggesting that Asian women possessed a unique chromosome associated with lung cancer. Coming from a cancer survivor’s family, I hope to continue to research this correlation and, someday, develop a quick and accurate diagnostic kit or device for cancer identification or implement lung cancer risk screening for Asian American women, similar to the breast cancer risk screenings for women. As a future biomedical engineer,

Doctors need to know the amount of cancer and where it is in the body to be able to choose the best possible treatment. For example, the treatment for early stage breast

During our lifetime we have heard of many people or know people that have cancer time and time again. We see it from movies to stories we see whether online or that we know. Most people know what it is but do we really know. Today I will talk about: General description of what cancer is, biology of the disease, symptoms, treatments, genetics and information on how to deal with this situation if you have or know of somebody that has cancer. At the end I hope you are inform what cancer is.

The need for new and more effective treatment continues to increase and personalized medicine appears to be the answer to our prayers. With further research personalized medicine could revolutionize pharmaceuticals and to go out on a limb even find a cure for aids and other cancers. But it is too early to have high expectations for a science that has not been deeply explored. It seems that the fantasy of finding a perfect match treatment for each individual has raised support from many institutions including the White House and the FDA. There have been some recent personalized medicine treatments approved by the FDA and this has lead President Obama to bring forward the Precision Medicine Initiative (U.S. Food and Drug Administration), which would give millions in monetary support for research to be conducted on personalized medicine. The issue here is whether

This personalized approach is carried out using unique genetic and molecular biomarkers or signatures as epigenetic and the microenvironment play an essential role in the final manifestation of the malignant process

The book The Personalized Medicine Revolution: How Diagnosing and Treating Disease are About to Change Forever is an interesting journey through the evolution of our scientific knowledge and subsequent technologies followed by a final foray into the most current accomplishments in personalized medicine and where it’s going.

Eric S. Lander, the founding director of the Broad Institute, a science research center at Harvard and M.I.T., said resolving these issues is crucial to taking advantage of the knowledge hidden in our genomes.“If we are going to solve cancer, it’s going to take a movement of tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of patients willing to contribute information from their cancer genomes towards a common good,” Dr. Lander said. “We are going to need to have ways to have patients feel comfortable doing that. We can’t do it without a foundation of respect and trust.”

The relatively recent completion of the Human Genome Project has prompted a change in the approach of a lot of the current endeavors by broadening cancer research away from a focus on single genes, such as BRCA1 and BRCA2, to that of the entire genome of the individual.(Pasche & Absher, 2011). Tailoring therapy is a well-entrenched strategy employed when it comes to tackling cancer given that each patient harbors a unique constellation of different permutations that influence the probability, onset, and progression of their disease. The difference in disease prognosis can be mild to severe and is largely driven by the subtle but unique differences in genetic makeup of individuals. High-throughput tools have been developed to analyze nucleic acid and generate data that could help improve diagnosis and treatment of cancers by identifying new potential biomarkers for disease and also potential drug targets for the development of new therapies. This paper explores some of the available technologies that are at the forefront of

The complexity of the human anatomy is what limits us from witnessing what we currently think of as impossibilities. Rather, the lines which currently bound us are genetics; the root of the problem being the human DNA. A tough code to crack, the genes which make up DNA can, in some people, restrict a positive reaction to a drug intended to cure an ailment. Providing only one type of medication to a group of people with the same disease will always result in a handful of successes and failures. If given the technology to read a patient’s genetic sequence, doctors can modify a drug specifically to the patient’s needs, equating to a 100% success rate. The study of personalized medicine can change every treatment into one which works. Thus, removing

This invaluable data can then be compared to patients with similar molecule profiles, often time revealing more opportunities for treatment and care by enabling doctors to peak into the potential future of the patients cancer.

Josko (2014) asserts that the era of personalized medicine is upon us, and that with the completion of the Human Genome Project, and advances in DNA sequencing techniques and

These personal companions are able to monitor every human reaction to physical and emotional stimuli, as well as, how a specific disease process is affecting the different systems of the body, and how medications are systemically treating any disease process. This system will detect disease processes much earlier than is capable at the present time. This information is then transmitted to this global health care network, as previously mentioned, and the data used to better understand disease processes and help to find cures for these diseases. The human genome has also been decoded by computers, for the cost of around one-hundred dollars. With this technology, medical professionals can better understand why some people, and who these people are specifically, are more susceptible to different types of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and so on. These chronic conditions and diseases will be cured and prevented and the larger problem will be mutating viruses and “super bugs”, for which pharmaceutical companies have put very little effort into developing curative or nonresistant medications.