Three years before and roughly 90 miles away from where Yan Leyfman was born, a flawed nuclear reactor exploded at a Ukrainian power plant. The incident has come to be known globally as Chernobyl and is largely regarded as the worst nuclear disaster in history.
When Leyfman was born in 1989 in Bobruisk, eastern Belarus, the city was still reeling from the effects of the catastrophe, which coated the area in radioactive dust. He was an early developer, learning to walk and talk at the age of one, but around the time he turned two his prospects became bleak. “I started feeling extremely weak and I couldn’t hold food down,” he tells me. “My face and body were covered with cysts, but I wasn’t alone; people were dying left and right from this mysterious illness which was taking lives with no explanation.”
His parents took him to clinics and hospitals across the country, where he was diagnosed with everything from herpes to syphilis to HIV. Eventually, he was taken to a prestigious hospital in the former Soviet Union. “They had experts come and look at me like I was an ancient relic,” he says, “but no one could diagnose me. I was just dying slowly, day by day by day.”
Fortunately, he had grandparents in Ashdod, southern Israel, who sent their life savings to his parents, to help him get treatment abroad. After tense negotiations with the Belarusian government, he was flown to Israel for emergency treatment. After just six months he made a full recovery. “I’ll never forget the great care that those Israeli physicians showed me,” he says. “They proved to me that anyone can make a profound difference to people’s lives and inspired me to do the same when I grew up.”
Two decades later, he stayed true to his youthful dream, graduating with the highest distinction possible from Stony Brook University in New York, where hed been researching cancer stem cells. By the age of just 21, he had already contributed to the development of several highly effective anti-cancer therapies — one of which can effectively halt the progression of the disease and is currently undergoing clinical trials.
His desire to save lives and cure cancer was intensified by his mother’s diagnosis with the disease in 2009, probably connected to Chernobyl. “I said to myself that I’d do everything in my power to save my mum,” he says. “I owe everything to my parents; they sacrificed their prolific careers in the Soviet Union to emigrate to America so I could survive and have a better life.
“I have to be a success because my parents invested too much for me to fail. Everything that I do is devoted to them.”
After graduating from Stony Brook, Leyfman spent several years studying immunotherapeutics and stem cell biology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, before attending medical school. His academic contributions have won him many accolades and he has been recognised nationally as one of the top 15 medical student oncology researchers by both the American Society of Haematology and the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
“I am grateful for my success, but I am not a finished product yet,” Leyfman says. “I’ve not scratched the surface of my full potential. I’m just looking to find that next opportunity and mentor who can help me harness my potential for the betterment of the world. Because that’s what I feel I’m here to do.”
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck the United States, Leyfman, now 30, was recruited by the Global Covid Taskforce as a special advisor because of his unique research training in immunotherapy, cellular therapeutics and drug development. Despite being the youngest person on the taskforce, he has been leading the international consortium’s immunology group in devising solutions and shaping policy to improve survival outcomes.
“It’s a rare feeling to have so much belief in my abilities at this early stage of my career,” he says. “For someone to say to me ‘you can be the vehicle of change — here’s the baton, go and take it and we will support you’ is pretty incredible.”
Judaism is important to Leyfman. Growing up in Belarus, his family had to pray in secret and celebrate Chanukah with the curtains drawn.
He thanks God every day for giving him a second chance at life. “I see each day as a blessing — as another opportunity for me to reach my ultimate goal,” he says. “That goal is to make a positive impact on people’s lives and I aim to do that by being a physician and devoting my time to great patient care and innovation.”
He has been working with The Together Plan, a UK-based charity which is building a Jewish cultural heritage trail in Belarus, in collaboration with the AEPJ European Routes of Jewish Heritage, to promote better knowledge of European history.
“Many Jews suffered and died in Belarus and to date their stories have not been told,” he says. “The heritage trail will not only help the Jewish communities who remain in Belarus, but will also lead to a much deeper understanding of the migration and lives of Belarusian Jews in the diaspora.”
But his priority is finding a cure for Covid-19. “I was the child that was never supposed to make it, but I defied every single statistic,” he says. “I believe I was saved for a reason and the pandemic has given me a new sense of purpose and the opportunity to do what I was put on this earth to do — to use my experience and insight to make a positive difference to the world.”
