THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENETIC SEQUENCING

HOW GENES ARE MAPPING THE WAY TO CANCER CURES

- Alexis Kayser

LIKE MANY CANCER PATIENTS, MICHAEL Wolff wanted answers. But, like many cancer patients in 2015, he wasn't getting them. After years of lymphoma treatment, the renowned jazz musician was still sick and unable to play. His wife insisted that he seek a second opinion at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. MSK doctors found that, rather than lymphoma, Wolff had histiocytic sarcoma: a rare blood cancer affecting 300 Americans each year. He was referred to Dr. Mrinal Gounder, a sarcoma medical oncologist and early drug development specialist. The pair—now friends—recounted their first meeting for Newsweek.

“Look,” Wolff recalls telling Gounder, “if you don’t know about this, get me to the doctor seeing the most of these.”

“I’ve seen the most of these,” Gounder replied.

“How many?”

“Ten.”

Wolff didn’t ask what happened to those 10 patients. It became clear just how little doctors—even experts—knew about his rare cancer. But Gounder had an idea: Perhaps Wolff’s genes could point them in the right direction.

Genetic sequencing was new at the time, akin to “science fiction work,” Gounder said. The test revealed Wolff had a mutation that had been recently linked to a common lung cancer. Gounder believed a pill called Mekinist, approved to treat certain melanomas, could be effective.

Wolff was a bit skeptical—after all that chemo, could a pill really be the answer?

“What’s the research on this medicine?” Wolff asked.

Gounder answered: “You are the research.” No one with his specific cancer had taken Mekinist before. But within two days of taking the pill, all of Wolff’s symptoms had vanished. Within 10 days, a PET scan showed an 80 percent reduction in his Stage four tumors.