August 19. For "Here& Now, I'm Aditi Debnath.
>> In medical news, Wisconsin learned this week it has been
named as one of 12 technology hubs for the bio health
industry, and with that designation comes nearly $50
million. Over the next five years. The focus is on
personalized or precision Stephen Potter reports.
Wisconsin is front and center on efforts to advance precision
medicine. >> I love this machine.
>> A couple of years ago, when she was 43, Megan Haensgen had a
doctor's appointment, went in and saw that colorectal surgeon.
>> He sat down, looked me square in the face and said, I'm almost
100% certain you have cancer. And I argued. I said, no, I'm
here for my hemorrhoid. And he gave me a minute. And then I
realized that he what he was saying. And so that was the
start of the journey. They did a biopsy in the office that day.
Everything was very quick, rushed, definitely felt a sense
of urgency. I knew I'd been walking around with cancer for
several years, so I was really scared.
cancer treatment could be done close to home, and they said no.
>> We feel strongly that this is where you need to be.
>> She had her treatment done at the Froedtert hospital campus in
Milwaukee, using the Radixact Radiation therapy machine. It's
designed to deliver cancer killing beams of energy to a
very focused area. And given the sensitive spot of Haensgen
cancer and the proximity to the rest of her digestive system,
that's exactly what she needed. >> As a patient. You want as
targeted of a therapy as you can get, so you don't damage healthy
tissue, and so you can spare, you know, your quality of life,
that kind of precision, tailor made treatment based on the
individual patient's conditions, ailments and body needs is known
as precision or personalized medicine.
>> And researchers say it's the wave of the medical future.
>> Every patient is a unique individual. They have their own
genetics, their own exposures, their the environment that they
have been in. And so precision medicine is this approach that
could we actually learn more about each individual patient so
that each patient gets the right drug at the right time?
>> Doctor Mohammad Murtaza is the associate director of the
center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicine at
component of precision medicine, he says, is looking at a
patient's DNA. Doctors like Murtaza work to explore how
precision medicine can develop treatments for patients with
ailments like asthma, COPD, kidney disease and of course,
cancer. of their therapy based on their
genetic makeup? So not just the makeup of their cancer, but
actually their genetic makeup that they were born with,
Murtaza says. >> We've barely scratched the
surface of what these new medical advancements can do.
>> What I see precision medicine interacting with a lot more is
new advances in data science and artificial intelligence and
us really make sense of this data and then make better
clinical decisions. >> But precision medicine isn't
just research and patient treatment. It's also big
business. A number of Wisconsin companies are poised to be the
lead innovators in this medical revolution.
>> It's very precise, submillimeter accurate
radiation. called Accuray, which moved its
headquarters to southern Wisconsin last year.
products the CyberKnife, the Radixact, which is also the form
of TomoTherapy, which originated here in Wisconsin and then the
precision planning software where the doctors pull in MRI
and CT images and they literally paint on the image, where do
they want to radiate? And then the areas that they want to
protect from radiation. precision and personalized
medicine companies operating in the state.
>> We have leaders in genomics, like exact Science for
diagnostics, Illumina for DNA sequencing. And then we have
this a supply chain that's built around Plexus and Rockwell,
where we actually manufacture and make things here. And then
we have the clinical institutions like UW, the
Medical College of Wisconsin. So within Wisconsin, we have the
whole ecosystem of what we were calling the invent, build and
deploy life cycle for personalized medicine.
>> Because of this network of companies, the federal
government recently designated Wisconsin as a bio health
technology hub, which may also mean an influx of money. Lisa
Johnson is the chief executive officer at BioForward, the
state's bio health industry association. She explains the
objective behind the designation to fund tech hubs throughout the
country in key technology areas where the United States needs to
become more competitive. The program also brings together
partnerships for data collection with the intent to benefit
patients. >> That data collection that
really guides now our physicians, but also certainly
our innovators on where what kind of drugs should be brought
to market. It's certainly we get that data from medical imaging
from our diagnostics to really guide where we should go with
our drugs in the future. >> Personalized medicine is
about the right treatment for the right patient at the right
time. So the goal is to give them effective care, but also
not to give them unnecessary care where they're going through
unnecessary procedures, unnecessary tests. It may be
having side effects that that they don't need to face, but to
really match them with what's going to address their disease.
>> For patients like Haensgen, who is now cancer free after
chemotherapy and laser focused radiation, precision and
personalized medicine made a life altering difference. She
hopes the advancements continue, even since the three years that
I've been treated, I know that my doctors and my team at my
hospital on this machine are doing things a little
differently, and that's just in the last three years.
>> So I can only imagine that research and innovation just
will improve going forward. To make things even better for
future cancer. Cancer patients future cancer. Cancer patients