The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2023
ASCO turns the sound of dying cancer cells into an open-sourced sound therapy
ASCO turned lab recordings of cancer cells dying into 'sounds of meaning' — an open-sourced therapy for hospitals, universities, patients and caregivers.
American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)
What it had to solve
Studies show that a cancer diagnosis alone can reduce the ability to fight disease. ASCO set out to boost patients' resiliency and outcomes through psychoneuroimmunology — the science of how the mind affects health and disease — rather than through another awareness campaign.
How it works
Studies show that a cancer diagnosis alone can reduce the ability to fight disease. Facing that, ASCO — with Harvard Medical School, Cancer Dojo and Berklee School of Music — built its response on psychoneuroimmunology, the study of the mind's effect on health and disease: strengthen patients' resiliency and their outcomes may follow.
The creative leap was to work with the actual sound of cancer cells dying, captured in the lab and then reshaped with Berklee into 'sounds of meaning'. Where the words 'you've got cancer' are among the most dreaded in life, patients could now hear the disease itself being fought.
The result became an open-sourced sound therapy for hospitals, universities, patients and caregivers, launched with a website, a radio ad and a film and given a major presence at the ASCO 2023 oncology convention. D&AD preserved the work in its awards archive; the archive page records no usage figures, so the case stands on the mechanism itself.
Why it lands
- The material is the insight: sound recorded from dying cancer cells makes mind-body healing audible rather than abstract.
- It converts the most dreaded sentence in oncology — 'you've got cancer' — into something patients can listen to and act on daily.
- Open-sourcing the therapy makes distribution the campaign: any hospital, university or caregiver can adopt it without a price barrier.
- Bringing the work to ASCO 2023 put the idea in front of the clinicians who could actually prescribe it.
What it did
The therapy left the lab as a free, open-sourced resource rather than a paid product, aimed at hospitals, universities, patients and caregivers, and reached the profession at the ASCO 2023 oncology convention with a website, radio ad and film. D&AD preserved the work in its awards archive, where the jury called turning the most dreaded diagnosis into a sound of healing 'genius'; the archive page records no usage metrics.
What you can take
When the fear is the diagnosis itself, give patients a sensory event they can act on: a sound they can hear and use daily makes the mind-body argument tangible instead of theoretical.
Since then
The Most Beautiful Sound now lives in D&AD's awards archive as an example of turning a disease's biology into a patient-facing therapy. The archive entry carries no adoption numbers, so what transfers is the mechanism: a diagnosis that weakens the body can be met with a sound that trains the mind to help it fight.
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