Team Player

Why you should consider volunteering for a clinical trial

- Sydney Loney 

I'M NOT SURE how many tubes of blood I donated in the end-not being fond of needles, I fixed my gaze over the nurse's left shoulder throughout the proceedings. But it felt like a lot. And yet it also felt like it was the least I could do to give back.

I'm now one year into a five-year clinical trial studying my emotional response to the results of genomic sequencing, a relatively new type of test that digs into nearly every letter of your DNA code (unlike traditional genetic testing, which looks at only a few genes at a time).

One of the goals of the trial is to determine how useful genomic sequencing is for both doctors and patients. In addition to the bloodletting, all that's required of me are periodic 30- to 60-minute Zoom interviews with the researchers for the first year and a half, after which the team will continue to study my health data quietly in the background.

As someone who has been successfully treated for two different types of cancer, I know just how important clinical trials are when it comes to finding new ways to detect, diagnose and treat disease. Quite frankly, I wouldn't be here otherwise. And it was thanks to the trial of a new drug that a cousin of mine, who had been diagnosed with a rare, and terminal, form of lung cancer, was able to spend an extra year with his young family.

In my case, scientists were looking for cancer patients who had been given a negative genetic test result and were open to receiving genomic sequencing in hopes of discovering a gene related to their disease. Maybe it would help identify a new genetic link to cancer. Maybe it would offer my family answers about our seemingly genetic susceptibility to wayward cell mutations. And, just maybe, it would help lead to new treatments for future generations of cancer patients. To me, it's humbling to be even a small part of that possibility.

Not All Research Is Created Equal