The story of prostate cancer patient, Bryce Olson, is an incredibly inspiring one. Diagnosed at the young age of 44 with de novo metastatic prostate cancer 6 years ago, Bryce’s desire to be here for as long as possible for his young daughter has propelled him to near Rock-Star fame for all patients dealing with advanced cancer. In addition to his penchant for wearing T-Shirts embossed with a heavy-metal gothic font that says, Sequence Me, Bryce has another mantra that he shares with AnCan – “Be your own best advocate.”
Teaming up with various luminaries in the prostate cancer field and high-tech, high-powered bioinformaticians, Bryce is involved in creating a Virtual Tumor Board to help find a cure for his now heavily pre-treated advanced cancer, racing against the clock. He and his collaborators hope to scale up the Virtual Tumor Board concept to help many other individuals as well, in the future. For the uninitiated, a Tumor Board is a treatment planning approach in which a number of doctors who are experts in different specialties review and discuss the medical condition and treatment options of a patient. For prostate cancer, these specialists might include a urologic surgeon, a medical oncologist and a radiation oncologist, among others.
Since I could never do justice to telling Bryce’s story of courage and persistence, with all its highs and lows, please take the time to read the WIRED magazine article on him here: https://www.wired.com/story/one-mans-search-for-dna-data-that-could-save-his-life/
And visit his website here: https://sequenceme.org/ to find out more about his mission to get all advanced cancer patients genome sequenced, and where you can order one of his Sequence Me T-shirts to benefit children with cancer.