How Dana-Farber Investigators Seize Opportunities to Advance Medicine

Investigators who run investigator-initiated trials (IITs) have two essential qualities. One is curiosity, which keeps them alert, aware of discoveries, and able to make connections that lead to new treatment ideas.   The second is determination.   “The burden of responsibility for what is typically a many-year-long study falls on that one investigator,” says Ursula Matulonis, MD, … Read more

Can Less Treatment for Colorectal Cancer Yield the Same Results? 

Colon and rectal cancer combined are the fourth most commonly diagnosed cancers.  Eighty percent of patients are diagnosed at a stage of disease when treatment is given with curative-intent.  However, treatment can have both short- and long-term side effects that may impact quality of life.   To address these concerns, investigators at Dana-Farber have led clinical … Read more

Could AI Help Doctors Predict Pancreatic Cancer? 

As a cancer imaging fellow at Dana-Farber, Michael Rosenthal, MD, PhD, spent about two years working on a radiologist’s version of paint-by-number. Together with his colleagues, he annotated 687 computed tomography (CT) scans, manually differentiating skeletal muscle from fat tissue by labelling them with different colors.   The work was part of a 2018 project to … Read more

Bridging the Gap Between Medical AI Research and Real-World Clinical Impact 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has tremendous potential to advance healthcare and improve the lives of everyone. But successful clinical translation requires evaluating the performance of AI models on large and diverse real-world datasets. MLCommons, an open global engineering consortium dedicated to making machine learning better for everyone, announced on July 17, 2023, a major milestone toward … Read more

Living Systematic Review Guides Prostate Cancer Treatment Options

As science and clinical medicine advance, oncologists increasingly face the challenge of information overload. It can be hard for oncologists, especially those in community practices who cover many cancers, to keep up with the influx of new therapies, biomarkers, and clinical trial results. The go-to solution has been the systematic review. Researchers team up to … Read more

What Is ctDNA?

Like a mill crumbling into a river, solid tumors constantly shed bits of themselves — including their DNA — into the bloodstream. This free-floating genetic material, known as circulating tumor DNA, or ctDNA, contains a trove of information about the tumor.  Advances in technology have made it possible to extract ctDNA from a blood sample, … Read more

New Targeted Treatments Emerge For Gastric and Esophageal Cancer 

For years, patients with advanced forms of gastric and esophageal cancer have had relatively few treatment options. Most patients with inoperable tumors would receive chemotherapy, usually a combination of fluorouracil, oxaliplatin and leucovorin (known as FOLFOX). While this regimen is often effective, patients eventually develop resistance to the treatment and their tumors progress. Now, the … Read more

Research Drives Key Protein from the Shadows to Reveal Its Role in Breast Cancer Subtype 

In a branch of the PI3K protein family — with members named PI3Kα, PI3Kβ, PI3Kδ, and PI3Kγ — PI3Kβ was long treated as the proverbial middle child: neglected by cancer scientists in favor of its more prominent siblings.  In a new study, Dana-Farber researchers demonstrate that it doesn’t deserve its obscurity — that in fact … Read more

Clinical Trial Offers Lessons for Patient and Researchers 

When the time came for Jeffrey Ferreira to undergo a stem cell transplant for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), his Dana-Farber hematologist, Corey Cutler, MD, MPH, had some intriguing news: he was eligible for a clinical trial of a new approach to lowering the risk of chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), a common and sometimes severe aftereffect … Read more

New Trial Is First to Explore Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy in Hospice Patients

On a wave of promising research and positive media stories, psychedelic drugs are edging closer to mainstream use for treating a variety of mental disorders. A clinical trial recently launched by Dana-Farber investigators is the first to evaluate such an agent in patients receiving hospice care. The trial, which plans to enroll 15 patients served … Read more