It happened to Josh Sommer, 19, a junior at Duke University. Diagnosed last year with chordoma, a rare bone cancer, he applied his brainpower and, with a little luck, led an international charge to find a cure.

Trying to cure your own disease would be ambitious for a trained scientist, let alone a teenager who had never taken a biology class. But against the odds, Sommer has made real progress.

He learned to do laboratory research and has personally produced new findings about genes that might play a role in chordoma, which sprouts from the skull and spinal column. He has scoured the globe for cell lines cultured from live chordoma tissues, providing a vital resource for scientists testing possible treatments. And he has become an encyclopedia of knowledge about the disease, tracking every new paper published and the scientists behind them.

Working with his mother, Dr. Simone Sommer, a physician, Josh Sommer also established the Chordoma Foundation to coordinate and speed research efforts. Just a few months later, he co-sponsored the first international research meeting on chordoma, bringing together more than 50 scientists. At the Sommers' urging, National Cancer Institute researchers studying a treatment for leukemia agreed to test it on chordoma. Work the Sommers encouraged at Duke may soon lead to new trials for drugs to treat the disease.

Now, the mother-son team wants to raise $3 million within two years to support the foundation's work.

"It is truly amazing how much work has been done," said Dr. Neil Spector, a Duke oncologist who directs the Duke cancer center's program in experimental therapies. His lab began studying chordoma at the Sommers' request and has produced findings that suggest possible treatments.

"I've never seen anything like it," Spector said, "to have this concerted an effort in this short a time."

And time is critical for Josh Sommer. There is no cure for chordoma, and few treatments are effective. The average patient survives just seven years after diagnosis.

"I feel like I'm really under the gun," said Sommer, who has maintained a full course load and an "A" average at Duke. "You just start making things happen."

A fateful choice

Over and over, the right people and resources have come to Josh Sommer at the right time. Serendipity even seemed to play a role in his decision in 2005 to attend Duke, where he has found so many physicians and others willing to help.

Duke wasn't his first choice. A born engineer who had tinkered since early childhood, Sommer dreamed of attending M.I.T. in Boston. He was accepted there, and also had offers from Stanford and Georgia Tech.

Duke, however, was the only university that allowed freshmen to come in with student-initiated research projects. Sommer and his mother were sickened by mold in the walls of their Greensboro home, and he was bent on developing a method for measuring airborne mold toxins. He accepted Duke's offer of a four-year scholarship valued at more than $200,000. Work on his mold project continues today in the lab of a Duke engineering professor.

By winter break of his freshman year, Sommer was plagued by incapacitating headaches. A brain scan in January 2006 revealed a growth.

"The whole world was falling apart," said Simone Sommer, who trained as a family doctor and also holds a master's degree in public health.

In spring of 2006, Josh Sommer had surgery in Pittsburgh to remove his tumor, which produced a definitive diagnosis: chordoma. Sommer spent his summer recovering and reading everything he could about his cancer.

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