When I heard in late 2017 that doctors in Florida were applying Darwin’s theory of natural selection to improve cancer treatment, I jumped on the story. It took me almost two years to report this feature piece. My article, which appeared in WIRED magazine, describes how prostate cancer patients receiving the new, evolution-based treatment are living longer than expected while using half as much of a typically prescribed drug, which usually runs at $120,000 a year.
This is a story not just about the science of extending lives but also about lessening the massive financial burden on individuals with cancer. The European School of Oncology is looking for articles that “are changing the way we think about cancer” and my investigation has exposed a possible new paradigm shift in how we think about cancer and calculate drug dosing to treat it.