Stories of progress, inspiration, and information in overcoming osteosarcoma.

Suresh Madheswaran and his wife Yuvarani

Multiple Cancer Diagnoses Spark a Career in Pediatric Cancer Research

When Suresh Madheswaran, PhD, was diagnosed with multiple cancers, he took it on himself to advance the research — for his own sake and for his fellow cancer patients.

In 2005, at age 21, Suresh Madheswaran, PhD, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in his left arm. An osteosarcoma diagnosis would be life-altering for anyone, but for Suresh it was especially troubling because he had had cancer once before — not osteosarcoma, but Hodgkin’s lymphoma, at age 6.

Suresh had been living cancer-free in Tamil Nadu, India, for fourteen years after he completed treatments for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Then at age 20, he was diagnosed with the autoimmune disorder Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. A year later, he was shocked to learn that he had osteosarcoma. In 2008, he was diagnosed with a third cancer called basal cell carcinoma. Suresh wanted to know if there was some connection between all these diagnoses.

“I asked myself, what would be the cause of this? Is it bad luck? Is it something in my genes? Could it have been the radiation from my previous cancer treatment? What is the reason?” To this day, he has kept tumor samples (FFPE blocks) from his osteosarcoma, so he can continue studying the tumor profile.

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“I’m very nervous about my cancer coming back, but if you stand for something good, you won’t feel bad for falling down. You will never stop getting up again. Even if my life is shorter, I want it to be meaningful.” — Suresh Madheswaran, PhD
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