The Philadelphia Chromosome
ListenGUEST: JESSICA WAPNER
Many people are living longer lives today because of a 12 year-old cancer drug created from a scientific discovery that started over 60 years ago at the University of Pennsylvania and Fox Chase Cancer Center – a missing piece of DNA in a gene was linked to the painful and deadly chronic myelogenous leukemia, which affects about 6,000 Americans each year. Science writer JESSICA WAPNER has pieced together the work of many researchers and doctors, and the suffering of patients who helped create the first kind of targeted cancer therapy, and opened up more clinical trials for rare diseases in her new book, “The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level.”
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