As scientists race to develop and test new treatments for COVID-19, Dana-Farber’s Wayne Marasco, MD, PhD, and his lab team are bringing one of the world’s most formidable resources to the effort: a “library” of 27 billion human antibodies against viruses, bacteria, and other bodily invaders. The collection, created by Marasco and his associates in … Continued
A massive international effort has taken a big step toward mapping all the major cancer-causing mutations in the human genome, generating new knowledge about how tumors form. The extensive role played by large-scale structural mutations in cancer was among the findings of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Project, according to Rameen Beroukhim, MD, … Continued
This article was written by Donna Vatnick, BS, clinical research coordinator in Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention. Historically, cancer risk has been confined to the binary: male versus female. After the discovery of BRCA1 and BRCA2 in the mid-90s, testing of these genes was most often recommended to women. The substantially … Continued
Immunotherapy for cancer has made some of its biggest inroads against hematologic malignancies such as leukemia and lymphoma, with treatments such as checkpoint inhibitors and CAR T-cell therapies producing long-lasting remissions in some patients. But there’s broad agreement that the potential of such therapies has only begun to be tapped and that combining immunotherapy drugs … Continued
The approval of the drug tazemetostat to treat epithelioid sarcomas is a victory for patients and a vindication of the idea that success may take different forms in different cancers. It’s also an affirmation of the value of research at Dana-Farber that began in the early 2000s with basic science discoveries and progressed into clinical … Continued
For designers of targeted drugs, the biggest bullseye in prostate cancer has been the androgen receptor — a specialized net on prostate cells that snares androgen molecules to spur the cells’ growth. Drugs that block, or inhibit, the receptor can halt the cancer, but not all patients benefit from them, and nearly all those who … Continued
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
