Every year, about 14 million people are diagnosed with cancer. That’s roughly the population of Los Angeles. Many are treated with powerful medicines, using chemotherapy. But the side effects can be as difficult as the disease. Others have surgery to combat the disease.
In the U.S., it is the leading cause of death for men and women aged 40- to 79-years-old, reports the American Cancer Society. But a new therapy that works with an individual’s genes is on the horizon, says cancer expert William Nelson, M.D., Ph.D.
Nelson is director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. It is ranked as one of America’s top cancer research facilities, according to the National Cancer Institute. “Precision medicine” is a new field of medicine that works with an individual’s “variations in genes, environment and lifestyle,” reports the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH is a federal research center for medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.
It is a fast-growing area of medicine. Nelson said almost every U.S. hospital and health care center is promoting precision medicine as a service.
