Immunology is one of the most promising areas of cancer treatment today. Immunotherapy drugs, which use the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer cells, have been effective in treating several forms of the disease, including melanoma, prostate cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, and certain types of brain tumors. The immune system has natural stopping points when … Read more
Researchers in Dana-Farber’s Center for Neuro-Oncology are now launching attacks on glioblastomas from a new angle – by turning the patient’s immune system against the cancer cells. Where targeted chemotherapy uses drugs to disable proteins that cancer cells need to grow, immunotherapy drugs stimulate the patient’s immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells. Traditional drugs … Read more
More than half of all people with cancer will get chemotherapy – powerful drugs that kill cancer cells to cure the disease, slow its growth, or reduce its symptoms. There are more than 100 different drugs used in chemotherapy, sometimes alone, but more often in combinations that have proven effective against specific types of cancer. … Read more
Treatments that unleash the body’s own disease-fighting cells against cancer – an approach known as immunotherapy – have been heralded as the “Breakthrough of the Year” by Science magazine.
Like all vaccines, prostate cancer vaccines work by stimulating the body’s immune system. Unlike vaccines for the flu, COVID-19 and other infections, which protect against disease, prostate cancer vaccines are a form of treatment. Treatment vaccines activate the immune response against cancer cells by targeting antigens – cancer-related proteins produced in greater abundance in tumor … Read more
Andrea Baxter remembers talking with girlfriends prior to her first mammogram in February 2023, just four months after her 40th birthday. “We joked about how these routine scans were a sign of getting older,” she recalls. “Nobody thought anything bad would come from them.” From working in the insurance field, Baxter knew that mammograms — … Read more
As she hopped off the bleachers onto the grass after a graduation ceremony, Elizabeth Zarrella felt an unfamiliar pain in her back. A visit to the emergency room a week later revealed the source of the pain and the reason for its severity: her vertebrae were so brittle that two of them had been compressed … Read more
Small cell lung cancer broadly consists of four molecular subtypes, three of which are driven by expression of proteins called transcription factors. Targeting these transcription factors has been a long-held goal, yet currently there are no medicines that target them directly. Rather, patients today receive standard-of-care treatment consisting of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Within a year, … Read more
Multiple myeloma is a cancer of the bone marrow. It affects plasma cells, which are mature forms of blood cells called B-lymphocytes. In the case of multiple myeloma, abnormal plasma cells build up in the bone marrow, and can cause anemia. In addition, multiple myeloma may cause kidney problems, bone injury and fractures. There have … Read more
In trial after clinical trial, metastatic colorectal cancer has been largely undeterred by immune checkpoint inhibitors. Although these drugs have shown effectiveness in Hodgkin lymphoma, lung cancer, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, and nearly a dozen other malignancies, their track record against colorectal cancer has been lackluster, particularly for patients with the most common subtype of … Read more
In Zhejiang Province, China, Yijia Wang headed to his local physician to find out the source of a lower back pain that had bothered him for weeks. Results from a biopsy took several weeks, eventually revealing a diagnosis of collecting duct carcinoma, a rare cancer in the kidney. Wang’s first round of treatment with a … Read more
Bladder cancer treatment is advancing, with several approved immunotherapy options, an approved gene therapy, and an approach to cell therapy planned for testing in clinical trials at Dana-Farber. What is bladder cancer? The most common form of bladder cancer is urothelial carcinoma, in which the urothelial cells that line the bladder and urinary tract begin … Read more
Follicular lymphoma is a slow-growing form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) that arises in white blood cells called B lymphocytes. It’s named for the clumps of abnormal B cells, called follicles, that develop in patients’ lymph nodes. It accounts for 20-30% of all cases of NHL. Although follicular lymphoma currently isn’t curable, patients can live with … Read more
Bispecific antibody therapies are a type of immunotherapy for patients with B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. These therapies provide a valuable new option for patients. There are many standard therapies that are monoclonal antibodies. These therapies treat cancer by binding to a marker on cancer cells and rallying the immune system to destroy them. Bispecific antibodies are … Read more
Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is the most common form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, diagnosed in more than 18,000 people in the U.S. every year. It is a fast-growing lymphoma that can arise in the lymph nodes or, more rarely, in organs such as the spleen, liver, and others. As its name indicates, DLBCL involves the … Read more
Dana-Farber researchers have found that a transcription factor called SOX17 gives colon cancer a safe space to develop.
Lung cancer is on the rise in young people, particularly those who are assigned female at birth (AFAB).
Research by Dana-Farber scientists shows cancer cells can use the TREX1 protein to silence genes that might summon an immune system attack on the cells.
In the fall of 2019, John Brazeau’s back pain got so bad that it interfered with his ability to engage in the two hobbies he loved most in his retirement on Cape Cod: golfing and clamming. Despite keeping up with physical therapy exercises meant to relieve the pain, it wasn’t diminishing. Then in 2020, Brazeau … Read more
There are several types of lung cancer. On a basic level, lung cancers fall into two main subtypes: small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Just as each person is unique, every lung cancer is unique. At Dana-Farber’s Lowe Center for Thoracic (Lung) Cancer Treatment Center, oncologists work with a team … Read more