When my maternal grandmother was hospitalized, her condition quickly worsened due to uncontrolled diabetes. She passed away before we could fully understand what was happening. Watching her suffer opened my eyes to the devastating gaps in the medical system, especially when it comes to how metabolic diseases are treated and understood.

A few years earlier, my grandfather had passed away from cancer: a disease that, at the time, felt entirely separate from what later took my grandmother. But as I learned more, I became curious about how these seemingly disparate conditions that shaped my family might actually intersect. That curiosity led me to scientific research.

I began studying nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), a rare and aggressive head and neck cancer that disproportionately affects marginalized communities. Despite its severity, NPC remains underfunded and understudied, particularly in regions with fewer medical resources. It is often diagnosed late, increasing the risk of recurrence and reducing the chance of survival.

Then, during my research, my paternal grandmother was diagnosed with stage 4 signet ring cell carcinoma. Her cancer had progressed silently and was caught far too late for meaningful treatment. I became her advocate, asking questions that had no answers and navigating a system that offered few options. I realized how dangerous it is when conditions like hers are overlooked simply because they are not common in places like the United States.

Now, under the mentorship of Dr. Ayman Reffai, a Fulbright Scholar from Stanford University School of Medicine, I have been contributing to ongoing research at Stanford Medicine’s Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection. The team has preserved DNA extracted from NPC tissue and blood samples, but here’s the catch: without funding, we cannot sequence them. Genomic sequencing is the next crucial step to uncovering the hidden genetic and metabolic drivers of this disease—insights that could lead to earlier diagnoses, personalized treatments, and hope for patients who currently have so few answers.

With your help, this research will:

Our goal is to combine genomic, proteomic, and clinical data into a full molecular profile of NPC. This could open the door to targeted therapies and early diagnostic tools that patients so urgently need.

Your donation, no matter the size, directly fuels this work. You are not just supporting a research project—you are giving voice to the silenced, hope to the overlooked, and a future to families like mine who deserve better options.

Please donate today. Together, we can unlock the genetic code of a forgotten cancer and change lives.