New Canaan Resident Attends White House Health Summit

New Canaan resident Kathy Giusti, who is founder of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF), participated in the White House Precision Medicine Initiative Summit.

The PMI Summit that was held Feb. 25 highlighted progress made over the past year to advance precision medicine, an approach that tailors disease treatment based upon individual differences in a patient’s genes, environment and lifestyle.

President Obama participated in a panel discussion, where he applauded the efforts of 40 private sector groups - including the MMRF - that launched innovative, precision medicine programs.

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“We applaud the efforts of the NIH and the White House in strategically identifying the importance of precision medicine to find cures,” Giusti said in a statement.

Giusti, who has multiplemyeloma, a rare and fatal blood cancer, also said, “At the MMRF, we firmly believe that precision medicine will change how patients are treated and cured and we've made precision medicine our top priority. We are committed to working collaboratively and across all sectors to help advance the national Precision Medicine Initiative.”

After Obama announced creation of the PMI during his 2015 State of the Union address, Giusti was one of only two patients named to the Precision Medicine Initiative Working Group. That appointment has led to the MMRF creating the MMRF Precision Medicine Model, an end-to-end system in cancer research that has led to the approval of 10 drugs to treat myeloma in the last decade.

Contributed photo: Kathy Giusti.