What Is Ewing Sarcoma?

Ewing sarcoma is a cancer that grows in the bones and soft tissues, usually in the thigh or pelvis. It is most common in children and young adults between the ages of 5 and 20, and more common in boys than girls. Although most patients are teenagers, Ewing sarcoma can sometimes occur in older adults … Read more

Solving Puzzles with Cigall Kadoch

Growing up in the San Francisco area, Cigall Kadoch, PhD, had a passion for puzzles. The daughter of a Moroccan-born, Israeli-raised father and a mother from Michigan who together developed an interior design business, Kadoch excelled in school and pretty much everything else. Above all, she loved to solve brain-teasers. In high school, however, Kadoch … Read more

What is Liposarcoma?

Cancers known as sarcomas develop in the connective tissues, such as muscle, fat, and bone, that hold the body together. The type of sarcoma called liposarcoma originates in fat cells that have been driven by random DNA errors into malignant growth, forming tumors. George Demetri, MD, director of Dana-Farber’s Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology, … Read more

Research Shines Spotlight on Risk of Morcellation Procedure in Hysterectomy

Research by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists supports the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s recent warning about laparoscopic power morcellation, a procedure sometimes used to remove the uterus and uterine fibroids, noncancerous growths that often appear during childbearing years. The FDA based its warning on data suggesting that the procedure may spread unsuspected cancerous tissue beyond … Read more

Teen Patient Uses Images to Document Cancer Treatment

Rayquan “Ray” Fregeau’s smile lights up a room, even after five days of chemotherapy. His upbeat personality infuses his poetry, but until recently the 17-year-old patient at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center had trouble putting into words what he’s gone through since his February cancer diagnosis, especially when it came to telling friends about his experience.

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Facing First-Time Parenthood… and Cancer

The first year of your baby’s life is special. They come home to you this eating, pooping, screaming machine and twelve months later they are their own walking and babbling little person. It is a year to truly cherish because you realize what parents mean when they say, “they grow up so fast.”  Well, my baby’s year is going by incredibly fast. He is a crawling, smiling, happy boy. Meanwhile, I feel I have hardly moved at all. A shocking diagnosis interfered with what was supposed to be the happiest time in my life.

What do you do when you are a new parent and you have cancer? I know the answer firsthand.

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Faces of Childhood Cancer: Steven Clifford

Steven Clifford is an 18-year-old osteosarcoma survivor. A Boston native, he starts college at the University of California, San Diego this month. This is his story.

Life is made up of many difficult decisions. However, imagine my surprise when I had to make a tough and potentially life changing decision at the young age of 11. Up until then, I just was an average child who couldn’t wait to get out of school to play any sport imaginable with his friends.

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A Doctor and a Dancer

As a cancer researcher, Kimberly Stegmaier, MD, says her chosen profession offers “the mystery and excitement of discovery.” And she says the same is true of her passion outside the laboratory: dance.

“It’s a huge hook for me,” she says. Both in scientific research and in working on a dance piece, Stegmaier explains, “You start out testing a hypothesis or an idea, and you don’t know what the results will be. The magic of that unfolding is wonderful.”

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Five reasons to be optimistic about the future of cancer treatment

It’s not always easy to recognize that we live in a golden age. Too often we fail to appreciate the amazing things going on around us because we‘re so caught up in day-to-day activities and pressing demands that we presume that the extraordinary is rather ordinary.

So it may be with cancer treatment in 2012.  And the future looks to be even better – not necessarily easier, simpler, or cheaper, but unequivocally better.

Here are five reasons why.

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Genetic counseling now recommended for children with sarcoma

If your son or daughter has been diagnosed with a type of sarcoma – a tumor in connective tissue like muscles or bones – there are many questions: Will my child make a full recovery? What are the immediate and long-term side effects of treatment?

Most parents don’t consider whether their child will face a second cancer later in life.

However, a link between sarcomas and Li-Fraumeni syndrome, a rare condition that raises a person’s risk of developing one or more cancers to as high as 85 percent, has led genetic specialists at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center to recommend that all child sarcoma patients be offered genetic counseling for Li-Fraumeni syndrome. 

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