Bioscience Saved My Life: From Researcher to Patient and Back Again

Though most people intuitively understand that breakthroughs in medical treatments come out of medical research – out of days, weeks, months, years, and even decades of intensive laboratory work – it is a rare person who has an “inside look” at both the research side and the treatment side, who is both medical researcher and medical patient.

Katherine Helming Walsh is such a person.

Walsh was a 23 year old Ph.D student at Harvard Medical School in the biological and biomedical science program when she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Within a matter of days, she went from conducting graduate research in cancer biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Lab to being a patient in the hospital wing of the same building.

Walsh’s case was particularly challenging because despite the 90% rate of cure seen at the time in children with her condition, young adults diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia had a much lower rate of survival.

During the course of what would turn out to be a two-year treatment, scientists from the University of Chicago were conducting research that would result in the discovery of a novel chemotherapy treatment protocol. Walsh was fortunate enough to be a recipient of this protocol, and is now almost seven years into remission.

Walsh credits her team of treatment providers at Dana-Farber and especially the researchers at the University of Chicago for literally saving her life, attributing her survival to biomedical science and “the persistence, creativity and courage of the many scientists who came before all of us.”

Walsh is back in the lab, conducting cancer research with a very personal stake in discovering new treatment protocols, and points out that it is the same kind of research that she is currently involved in that gave her a second chance to pursue her passion.

As a prior cancer patient, she is also quick to acknowledge that most cancer patients are not as fortunate as she was and are “still waiting for that new drug, that clinical trial, the holy grail of the elusive cure.” Speaking as a medical researcher, she asserts: “The lives of these incredibly brave people depend on our research, on our perseverance and on our passion for science.”

Today, as the rare person who has been both researcher and patient, Walsh is dedicating her life to the study of biomedical science, saying she knows firsthand what it is to be gravely ill and reliant on the therapies that come out of the labs like the one she currently works in. Citing her own experience, she speaks from the heart when she says “My life is proof that together we can solve the most complicated and seemingly impossible medical puzzles. Together we can continue to make those discoveries that will transform the lives of people suffering from diseases today.”

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