Harvard study aims to research people who beat cancer

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Carol Martin is 67 and has advanced, inoperable pancreatic cancer.

"I have a particularly virulent form of that disease," she said. "I have squamous carcinoma, which means, according to my doctors, ordinarily the diagnosis to death is usually two months.

"This June is two years out from my diagnosis."

Not only is Martin back at work as a Harvard research administrator, she also finished this year's Boston Marathon amid the high winds and pouring rain.

"We had headwinds, we had crosswinds, they had water running on the street," she recalled. "They had people dropping out like flies."

But she made it. She speed-walked the course and reached the finish line in just over seven and a half hours.

Clearly, Martin is no ordinary pancreatic cancer patient in her response to treatment. But what is the key to her medical superpowers?

That's the type of mystery that a project called the Network of Enigmatic Exceptional Responders will try to solve.
Harvard Medical School YouTube

Based at Harvard Medical School, the project aims to become the first national registry for exceedingly rare cancer patients who beat overwhelming odds and respond mysteriously — even uniquely — well to treatments that failed to help others.

Researchers will gather masses of data on just about everything about these patients in hopes of finding patterns that can explain what went right.

Their responses are "so different, so outlying from any other clinical experience," said Dr. Zak Kohane, co-founder of the new network and chair of Harvard Medical School's Department of Biomedical Informatics. "It's a dramatic signal. So we know there's something there — but what is it?"

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