Associate Professor Diana Azzam riveted the audience recently when she presented at TEDxMiami: Beyond Boundaries. The researcher explained a new approach to personalized cancer treatment and how it has already been used to reverse pediatric brain tumors.
Azzam's talk highlighted functional precision medicine that combines genetic testing with the power of highly sophisticated drug screening in a lab. It starts with culturing living cells derived from a patient's tumor. A "library" of hundreds of FDA-approved cancer and non-cancer drugs are then tested on those cells. The goal: to find a killer match.
Or, in Azzam's words, identify "the right drug for the right person at the right time."
No longer would the standard-issue cancer drug be the default for dealing with recurrent disease. Instead, quickly and efficiently determining at the outset which drug or possible combination works means time saved, which means life saved.
Learn more when you watch the Ted Talk and read the FIU Research Magazine.
