George Eastwood, Executive Director at Emily Whitehead Foundation, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“On Monday I had the honor of moderating a fireside chat with Jonathan Gluck at the ScaleReady G-Rex Grant Tour in New York. My daughter Violet came along.
Jon has lived with multiple myeloma for more than two decades. That same morning, The New York Times Magazine published his piece on the moment he finally saw himself as a cancer patient. That happened when he received CAR-T and he writes about his journey with other patients on a fly fishing trip beautifully in the article.
On stage Jon spoke about something we hear again and again from the patients we connect with at The Foundation: the responsibility to tell your story and pay it forward to the next patient. I can’t do his words justice, but his responsibility stems from the following:
There are a lot of cancer patients, and a lot of writers, but not many cancer patients who are writers.
He also talked about how many hands his cells passed through on their way back to him. Most of you reading this work somewhere in the advanced therapy ecosystem, so you know those hands.
What’s new is that people outside our world are starting to see them. Just this summer, a longtime friend told me his shipping company picks up patient material for CAR-T. And Violet spent the day marveling at the compact delivery vehicles Amazon runs in NYC, built for New York’s streets. Once you start looking, the systems behind manufacturing and last-mile delivery are everywhere, and our field can learn from all of them.
The people in that room were some of those hands. Thank you to the sponsors who underwrote the day so every dollar went to The Foundation, and to every company whose tools help make these cells. Violet collected swag from each of you, as proof.
Photography: Violet Eastwood, Field Correspondent, Patient Delivery Desk. Compensated entirely in life science booth giveaways.”
You can also read: BMS Reports Iberdomide Combination Reduces Risk of Progression or Death by 51% in Relapsed or Refractory Multiple Myeloma
