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Naomi Hoffman
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Kensington, Maryland
Fighting leukemia |
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
Emerson’s quote describes the essence of medical research. It also is the motto that Naomi Hoffman lives by.
Naomi is a 24-year-old woman, a recent college graduate, and engaged to be married. She is active, outgoing, and positive. She is also a cancer survivor.
At the age of seven, Naomi was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), a disease that causes the production of too many white blood cells, which crowd out the healthy red blood cells and platelets. Her chance for survival was minimal. After countless rounds of chemotherapy, followed by total body radiation, she received a life-saving transplant of healthy bone marrow from her nine-year-old brother, Nathan, to replace her cancerous marrow.
Naomi’s leukemia treatments worked. Her leukemia is in remission, and not likely to come back. Yet, despite this medical triumph, Naomi’s battle is not over. As a result of her intensive cancer treatment, she now experiences additional health problems. The treatments that saved her life caused her to enter puberty at an early age, and she likely will not be able to bear children. Her heart must be checked twice per year to make sure that the chemotherapy and radiation have not caused damage. Recently, the radiation that she received to save her life when she was seven has resulted in her being diagnosed with a second cancer – this time papillary thyroid carcinoma.
Naomi’s story is a reminder that biopharmaceutical researchers must continue to go “where there is no path” and find new cures and better treatments for diseases like childhood leukemia. If Naomi were diagnosed today, targeted therapies might have reduced the additional medical problems and the secondary cancer. For children newly diagnosed with leukemia, these advances cannot come too soon.
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