Brian Druker, a researcher testing a new kind of cancer drug, becomes the film's central figure as the story tracks the first human trial of what will later be called Gleevec. In 1997, Bud Romine takes the drug with months to live, diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, and is back to normal health within 17 days, because the compound works by directly correcting the DNA damage driving the disease rather than poisoning cells indiscriminately. The film uses that case to explain a shift in cancer research: in 1990, Gleevec was essentially alone as a drug designed around a specific genetic flaw, and by the time of filming hundreds of similar DNA-targeted drugs are in development. The final hurdle, as the film lays it out, is cataloguing every damaged gene behind every cancer, a task the newly completed Human Genome Project is expected to make possible within about five years. Coming fifty years after Watson and Crick described the double helix, the film frames Druker's result as the moment that discovery starts paying off in patients.