Diagnosis to discovery: How a brain cancer survivor became a scientist helping others find answers

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]More than 700,000 Americans are living with a brain tumor and treating them as one of medicine's biggest challenges.

[00:00:06]Every tumor is different and doctors often don't know which drug will work best. Now, a brain cancer survivor is working to change that, not just for himself, but for every patient who comes next.

[00:00:19]This lab is exactly where Andrew Satterly is supposed to be. My cancer shaped my whole life. It It shaped my whole career direction. It It shaped how I think about life and and the important things in life.

[00:00:34]When Andrew was a 20-year-old engineering student, his world was turned upside down. I'm a brain cancer survivor.

[00:00:42]When I was 20 years old, I got hydrocephalus. Doctors removed a mass the size of a ping-pong ball, but after surgery, he faced a frightening reality.

[00:00:52]The doctors didn't know what drugs to give me. They didn't agree on what drugs to give me. Andrew and his family made the best decision they could, but never knew if it was the right one. Now, that experience is driving his life's work at UNC. These are suspension cells. Now, 18 years later, I'm here in in a lab that gets to work on this tool that I could have used as a patient. Now, he is helping develop the brain slice platform. Instead of guessing which drug might work, scientists can test medicines directly on a patient's living tumor by placing a tumor sample into living tissue outside the body and exposing it to different therapies.

[00:01:30]Yeah. It can respond in ways that it doesn't respond when you try to grow it up in a plastic dish. Allowing doctors to see what works and what doesn't. And in just 4 days, we can know if the tumor lived or died during treatment. The goal? It's meant to be personalized to every specific patient and their own tumor. For Andrew, this breakthrough isn't just science. It's personal.

[00:01:54]These are suspension cells, huh? Now, researchers say the technology is still being developed and must clear regulatory hurdles before it can guide everyday patient care, but they say brain cancer is just the beginning. The same approach could one day help doctors test treatments for other cancers, including tumors in the lungs and also the abdomen.