Genomics and Stem Cell Research Give Patient Her Life Back

At 28, Sandra Dillon was the picture of healthy living. She ran every day, ate healthy, didn’t smoke and recycled. But she had been bothered by a bump under her rib cage and after numerous tests, her doctors came back with very bad news: she had myelofibrosis, a life-threatening blood disorder that can lead to acute leukemia. No cure existed and no match for a bone marrow transplant was found. The only course of treatment was to try to manage her symptoms as she got sicker. Basically, there wasn’t much hope.

That was eight years ago. Flash forward to last week when Dillon spoke at the CIRM Governing Board’s Spotlight on Disease seminar to happily report a more hopeful prognosis now that she’s participating in a clinical trial that targets cancer stem cells.

Dillon’s story provides a glimpse into a future of personalized medicine in which genomics, the study of genes and their function, is applied to pinpoint specific treatments for patients. Catriona Jamieson, Sandra’s physician and director for stem cell research at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center, spoke about the research, funded in part by CIRM, which led to the clinical trial.

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