Perhaps the biggest challenge in precision cancer therapy is tumors’ nasty habit of rebounding after an initial attack with targeted drugs has shrunk them almost out of existence. Instead of vanishing completely, curing the patient, the tumors leave behind a small cadre of cells that slumber in a dormant state, only to return in a … Continued
Medically reviewed by Geoffrey Shapiro, MD, PhD, and Christopher French, MD Although it is one of the most aggressive solid tumors in humans, NUT carcinoma responds better to treatment in some patients than others. But because it is rare — with only 20 to 30 cases diagnosed annually in the United States — doctors have … Continued
Medically reviewed by Michael J. Eck, MD, PhD Scientists have captured the most complete picture yet of a key molecular switch that is sometimes jammed in the “on” position in cancers. With the aid of recent advances in a tool known as cryo-electron microscopy, which can obtain crisp 3D images of large biological molecules, Dana-Farber … Continued
It was a decade that began with the electrifying results of a clinical trial for a revolutionary new cancer therapy and ended with a Nobel Prize in Medicine for very different cancer-related research. In between those dramatic bookends, the 2010s were packed with progress, with discoveries leading to the FDA’s 2017 approval of the first … Continued
For all their potential to curb or even cure some cancers, drugs known as immune checkpoint inhibitors come with a caveat: They’re effective in only a subset of patients. Predicting who those patients are, and understanding why others don’t respond as well, remains a major challenge. In a new study, researchers at Dana-Farber in collaboration … Continued
Early on an October morning, Shaun Tierney started a promising new treatment for his stage IV kidney cancer. Anxious to tell his longtime oncologist, he texted Toni Choueiri, MD, director of the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology at Dana-Farber. What he didn’t expect was that Choueiri would have his own big news: “Kaelin … Nobel … Continued
Von Hippel-Lindau syndrome (VHL) is a rare disorder in which tumors and cysts can arise in multiple organs and tissues. It affects about 10,000 people in the United States and is caused by a mutation in the VHL gene. The vast majority of people with the syndrome inherited a mutated copy of VHL from a … Continued
If you could somehow unroll the DNA from a single one of our cells, the tiny thread would stretch about two meters. Our cells do just the opposite, spooling their DNA astonishingly tightly around proteins, into packages known as nucleosomes. These packages, which together make up our chromatin, need to dynamically open and close at … Continued
In their search for better treatments for breast, ovarian, and other cancers, young investigators Jennifer Guerriero, PhD, and Sarah Hill, MD, PhD, rely on a precious commodity — patient tissue samples obtained by surgeons in Dana-Farber’s Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers. Studies of these normal and cancerous tissues, which are collected, banked, and … Continued
Medically reviewed by William G. Kaelin, Jr., MD Normal human cells need just the right amount of oxygen — not too much nor too little — to survive and stay healthy. This critical balance is regulated by an intricate oxygen-sensing process in the body, the discovery of which earned the 2019 Nobel Prize in Medicine … Continued
Earlier this year, a novel drug became the first agent to receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for patients with multiple myeloma who have exhausted all types of currently available therapies, including proteasome inhibitors, immunomodulatory drugs and monoclonal antibodies. A clinical trial found that 26.2 percent of such patients responded with significant shrinkage … Continued
Medically reviewed by David M. Weinstock, MD, and Eric Jacobsen, MD By banding together to study the basic biology and vulnerabilities of T-cell lymphoma, scientists at several major cancer research centers have sparked a surge of clinical trials of promising treatments for the disease. The string of new trials, some already open, some expected to … Continued
Medically reviewed by Rachael Grace, MD In the mid-1960s, David G. Nathan, MD, president emeritus of Dana-Farber and, at that time, a hematologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, published some of the first reports on a rare, inherited type of anemia caused by the breakdown of red blood cells because of a lack of a key … Continued
Medically reviewed by Catherine J. Wu, MD Within every human cell, a fateful balance prevails. The mitochondria — where nutrients from food are converted into fuel for the cell — serve as a kind of jury box where pro-survival proteins contend with proteins that favor cell death. In the ebb and flow of these proteins, … Continued
William G. Kaelin, Jr., MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, won a Nobel Prize in Medicine on Oct. 7 for deciphering the mechanism that enables cells to sense and adapt to changes in oxygen abundance. Kaelin participated in a live Q&A with Stat on Oct. 17. Below are highlights. What are the most important applications of … Continued
There was always a good chance William G. Kaelin Jr., MD, and two other scientists working on the same problem would share a Nobel Prize, as they did on Oct. 7, for deciphering the mechanism that enables cells to sense and adapt to changes in oxygen abundance. The three had already been honored with two major awards … Continued
Medically reviewed by Jun Qi, PhD Cancer is extremely clever at finding ways to survive, so even the most successful new drugs tend to become less effective over time as the tumors develop resistance. Often, cancer cells become resistant because of changes in the cells’ genetic code, allowing them to counteract or sidestep the drugs’ … Continued
Medically reviewed by Andrew Lane, MD, PhD Dana-Farber scientists had a perfectly reasonable theory of why acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN) sometimes become resistant to the targeted drug tagraxofusp. Cancer, however, can flout even the best theories. An account of the discovery of the true source of resistance to … Continued
Dana-Farber scientists recently uncovered a potential vulnerability in a form of ovarian cancer notoriously resistant to chemotherapy. Now they’ve opened a clinical trial involving a drug that targets that susceptibility in patients with the disease. The impetus for their research is a type of ovarian cancer with excess copies of the cyclinE1 gene (abbreviated CCNE1). … Continued
Bone marrow transplantation, which was first developed in the 1970s, was conceived as a way of dealing with the effects of high-dose chemotherapy for leukemia, lymphoma, and other blood-related diseases. The large doses killed diseased blood cells throughout the body but also destroyed the bone marrow, birthplace of new blood cells. By transplanting bone marrow … Continued
