Dana-Farber Research

Discovery Suggests Approach to Preventing Peripheral Neuropathy

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The symptoms of peripheral neuropathy, which affects about one-third of patients receiving chemotherapy, include numbness, tingling, and pain in the hands and feet. Some patients don’t experience these symptoms after treatment ends, but in other patients, they are long-lasting. There is currently no preventive or treatment for peripheral neuropathy, which is caused by the degeneration … Read more

Catch Me if You Can: Finding Cancer Cells that Hide in Plain Sight

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In the high-stakes contest of hide-and-seek between cancer cells and the human immune system, the advantage doesn’t always lie with the body’s defenders. A new approach to treatment, known as CAR T-cell therapy, may shift that balance of power. Cancer cells conceal themselves from the immune system not by barricading themselves in an impenetrable shell, … Read more

Attacking A Weak Point in Pancreatic Cancer’s Defense

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In the fall of 2015, at the age of 44 – young for a person to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer – Doron Broman was stunned to learn he had a large tumor on his pancreas that had metastasized to the liver. Facing only months to live, Broman would find himself in the right place … Read more

Multiple Myeloma Treatment Advances: Five Things to Know 

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For patients with multiple myeloma, a treatable but incurable cancer that affects blood plasma cells, there are many new options for treatment that are producing better, and increasingly long-lasting outcomes. Approved options include immunomodulatory drugs, proteasome inhibitors and monoclonal antibodies. More recently, immunotherapies such as CAR T-cell therapies and bispecific antibodies have been approved.   There … Read more

Immunotherapy Beats Chemotherapy for Advanced Bladder Cancer Patients

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The immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is the first therapy of any kind to improve survival in patients whose metastatic bladder cancer worsened after treatment with platinum-based chemotherapy. Keytruda proved so much better than chemotherapy in this “second-line” use that an international clinical trial was halted when the advantage became apparent. “This is very good news; … Read more

What Is CTLA-4 and How Does it Work in Treating Metastatic Melanoma?

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Since the early 2000s, when Dana-Farber scientists discovered that many cancer cells carry “checkpoint” proteins that ward off an immune system attack on tumors, a great deal of research has focused on the development and testing of agents capable of blocking those proteins. In many patients, such agents have sent cancers into long-term remissions. A checkpoint … Read more