Recent Articles

Watch and wait: When cancer treatment seems to mean doing nothing

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Watch and wait. That’s often one of the new terms added to your vocabulary when you’re diagnosed with cancer. Or maybe it’s wait and watch. Or active monitoring. Whatever it’s called, sometimes it’s the term used when there’s nothing to do to treat your particular cancer but wait. That’s a hard thing to do, most doctors … Read more

How to help your kids cope with your cancer

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For people with cancer, deciding how, and what, to tell others about the diagnosis can be a challenge. How do you tell your loved ones, or your employer, that you have cancer?

For parents, there’s another degree of difficulty: What do you say to your children? How much will they understand, and what’s the best approach?

Susan Englander, LICSW, a social worker at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who specializes in working with young adult patients — many of whom have children — offers these tips to parents with cancer on how to talk to their kids and help them through the process.

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Pregnancy and breast cancer: One mother’s story

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Rebecca Byrne had waited years for a doctor to tell her, “You’re pregnant.” She never imagined that just a few months after she first heard those words, she would hear four more: “You have breast cancer.”

Byrne still tears up when telling the story, but smiles when her 20-month-old daughter, Emelia, leaps into her lap. Emelia is the happy outcome of a painful period of Byrne’s life, when the joys of pending and early motherhood were shadowed by chemotherapy treatments, hair loss, radiation, and uncertainty.

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Do friends, family affect your health?

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In low-income, minority communities, tight-knit social connections can lead people to eat right and be physically active — but they can also sometimes be an obstacle to a healthy lifestyle, according to new research by investigators at Dana-Farber and the Harvard School of Public Health.

The findings present a mixed picture of the benefits and potential downsides of social ties as they relate to a healthy lifestyle.

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‘Encyclopedia’ charts genetics of cancer

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The Encyclopedia Britannica may have published its last print edition, but a group of Dana-Farber scientists and their colleagues recently produced one of the first encyclopedias to help researchers determine which subtypes of cancer are likely to respond to current drugs.

The freely available, online encyclopedia lists hundreds of cancer subtypes – each with a unique set of genetic abnormalities that define it – along with drugs that are known to target those defects. The data, described alongside a similar catalog developed by another team of investigators, will guide researchers in designing clinical trials – improving the chances that the drug being studied will act against the particular genetic vulnerabilities within a tumor.

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Cancer biologist finds links between science, art

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Polyak artAs a cancer biologist, Dr. Kornelia (Nelly) Polyak pores over countless images of breast cancer cells and their surrounding tissues, data tables, and graphs – visuals that only a scientist can find beautiful.

But when she sits down to paint, Polyak fills large canvases with a riot of vivid and deeply saturated colors, with thick brushstrokes rendering landscapes like purple fields of lavender in France, red-tiled houses on the Italian coast, and lush English gardens.

Polyak’s chosen medium is acrylic paint applied with little water and so thick that it resembles oils. She has been inspired by the Impressionist painters, including Monet and Manet and especially Van Gogh, with his bright colors and wide brush strokes.

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Prostate cancer: At what age should you be screened?

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What age is appropriate to get screened for prostate cancer and begin treatment? Recent news surrounding Warren Buffett’s diagnosis, including a report on Boston.com, has some asking if age should factor into these decisions. Dr. Philip Kantoff, chief of the Division of Solid tumor at Dana-Farber and director of Dana-Farber’s Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology, speaks … Read more

Two dads, one cause, and a whole lot of love

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Malia Jusczyk and her dad, GlenNo one would choose the way Glen Jusczyk and Greg Kelly became friends: at the bedsides of their little girls with cancer. Yet these extraordinary circumstances created not just a friendship, but a desire to give back to the place providing their children’s care.

On April 16, these dads, who consider themselves “out of shape,” will run the 116th Boston Marathon® as two of more than 550 runners on the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team to raise money for the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Cancer Research at Dana-Farber.

Jusczyk’s daughter, Malia, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a cancer that forms in nerve tissue and mostly affects young children, when she was just 2 years old. The family moved from Orlando, Florida, to Boston shortly after the news so she could be treated in the Neuroblastoma Program at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, which provides research and the latest treatments.

“We packed our bags as soon as we could,” recalls Jusczyk. “We have family in the Boston area and we wanted Malia to be at the best cancer center in the world for her disease.” There, Jusczyk met Kelly, whose 5-year-old daughter, Charlotte, was across the hall fighting the same type of cancer.        

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Family bonding in the Jimmy Fund Clinic

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By Sara Dickison Taylor

When our daughter Emily was diagnosed with leukemia at age 5, we found solace and support from other families facing pediatric cancer at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.

Our visits to Dana-Farber’s Jimmy Fund Clinic became a well-rehearsed play. If it was Friday, it was clinic day. Instead of going to kindergarten or playing with her friends like most 5-year-olds, Emily had her vital signs taken, had blood drawn through her Port-a-Cath, and received a weekly infusion of chemotherapy, platelets, and blood. It was difficult at times, but making friends with other families going through the exact same thing made it bearable.

It takes a village to help you through a child’s cancer treatment, and that includes other families as well as our clinical care team. The Jimmy Fund Clinic usually schedules appointments so that children come in on the same day each week – giving their patients and families a real sense of continuity. We forged relationships with many other “Friday families.” Seeing familiar faces lifted us up and offered a sense of comfort that was just as important for us parents as for the kids. The clinic became a small community for us – our own village.

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Cancer research updates from AACR

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The American Association for Cancer Research recently held its annual meeting in Chicago. Dr. Loren Walensky of Dana-Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Center talks about some of the highlights, including personalized medicine and a new grant that’s helping his team develop new technology to target cancer.

Mattel announces hairless version of Barbie doll

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Mattel Inc., maker of Barbie dolls, last week announced that it would create a bald version of the popular fashion doll to support people battling cancer.

The announcement came a few months after Beautiful and Bald Barbie, a Facebook group that petitioned Mattel to make a hairless version of the doll, gained mass support online. Their mission was simple:

We would like to see a Beautiful and Bald Barbie made to help young girls who suffer from hair loss due to cancer treatments, alopecia or trichotillomania. Also, for young girls who are having trouble coping with their mother’s hair loss from chemo. Many children have some difficulty accepting their mother, sister, aunt, grandparent or friend going from long-haired to bald.

“A hairless doll could really present a great opportunity for families and medical providers to talk about illness and hair loss with kids facing those issues,” says Cori Liptak, PhD, a psychologist in the Division of Pediatric Psychosocial Services at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. “It could also be an interactive way for some children to express their emotions about their own medical experience.”

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Advocating for student cancer survivors

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Advocating for your ChildAt age 7, Sophie was treated for a brain tumor at Dana-Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Center. As a result of her treatment, she struggled with ongoing fatigue, weakness on her right side, and chronic headaches.

Sophie began her freshman year as one of 2,000 students at a large public high school. Despite support from special education teachers, she struggled with the academic demands of her classes and the overwhelming size of the school. An extremely dedicated student, she spent hours each evening on homework, but she tired easily, which made the headaches worse, and she struggled to get through each school day.

More children than ever are surviving cancer. But some will pay a price in long-term effects. Radiation and chemotherapy for cancers involving the central nervous system (including brain tumors and leukemia) can impair problem-solving, multi-tasking, attention, and memory, putting students at risk for learning difficulties.

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Counting cells at lightning speed

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Magnifying glass focused on lab equipmentAt many supermarkets, you can dump a pocketful of change into a machine that rapidly counts your coins, sorting them into pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters and computing the total amount.

Imagine something similar in a research lab. In the past, cells had to be manually studied and counted under a microscope. But the development of flow cytometry technology, beginning in the 1960s and continually improving, has brought automation to counting and sorting human cells that’s reminiscent of the coin machine.

Flow cytometry today is routinely used in medical diagnosis of certain cancers, like lymphomas and leukemias, and as a powerful research tool for studying a host of different cell types and their interactions with drugs or the immune system.

“Investigators may be trying to look at a certain kind of cancer cell or immune system cell,” said Wayne Green, PhD, director of Dana-Farber’s Flow Cytometry Core Facility. “The analyzers can count the members of a certain subpopulation of cells, and then cull them so they can be grown in laboratory culture or used in gene expression studies.”

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‘Designed by patients like me’: A patient’s perspective on the Yawkey Center

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As a Dana-Farber employee planning events for the opening of Dana-Farber’s Yawkey Center for Cancer Care, I knew the building was designed with guidance from patients and families.

But I had no idea how important this was until shortly after the building opened – and, newly diagnosed with acute t-cell lymphoblastic leukemia/lymphoma, I walked through the doors as a patient myself.

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Men unite to cure women’s cancers

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Men unite to cure women’s cancersFor most people, getting involved with a cause means thinking about what type of organization they’d like to support. But this is a story about what happens when a cause selects you – taps you on the shoulder and asks you to engage in battle.

It began in 1998 when my wife Amy, then 40, was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer. Our two daughters were 5 years and 15 months old. Amy battled for 15 months, and died in 1999. Like many spouses of women who die of cancer too young, my next few years were all about balancing the family boat.

Fast forward to three years later, when I met my current wife, Ruth. We married in 2005 and Ruth adopted my daughters.

Just one year later, Ruth’s mother, Mildred Moorman, was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer and was treated at Dana-Farber by Dr. Ursula Matulonis. (She died earlier this year.) I had the opportunity to share our family’s story at a meeting of the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers Executive Council at Dana-Farber.

Always a strong supporter of cancer research, I wanted to do more; to find people like me.

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