On September 24, 2015, in a sixth floor room at Boston Children’s Hospital, 5-year-old Logan Lesselroth pressed the button that started the transfer of his newly harvested blood stem cells to his 3-year-old sister, Gianna. “This,” Gianna told him, “is a gift from your body.” The path to that moment and the stem cell transplant’s … Read more
Ronaldo de Oliveira was close to death. The 33-year-old father of two young children had been diagnosed with myeloid sarcoma, a rare form of leukemia that worsened despite treatment with six different chemotherapy regimens. His wife pleaded with his oncologist, Richard Stone, MD, director of the Adult Leukemia Program at Dana-Farber, to find something else … Read more
When you’re spending days on end in a hospital bed, it’s the little things that can make all the difference. That’s what Jess Moran learned when she spent 30 consecutive days in the hospital in 2014 after being diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Every day, Moran, then 25, would receive several cards, most from her … Read more
With new research in immunotherapy and targeted therapy, treatment options for blood cancer patients are rapidly expanding. Combination therapies have also caused much excitement among researchers and physicians, and ongoing clinical trials are continuing to look at new strategies that use multiple drugs for fighting these diseases. In this Cancer Conversations podcast episode, Irene Ghobrial, … Read more
The last two years have been very exciting for blood cancer research; many new targeted therapies and immunotherapies are improving treatment outcomes for patients with lymphoma, leukemia and multiple myeloma. “We’re starting to see a lot of hematologic malignancies benefit from immunotherapy,” says Irene Ghobrial, MD. “The excitement is there for so many trials and … Read more
Chris Potter was not a fan of flying, until a group of pilots he had never met transported him to his life-saving care team. Potter, then 42, was struggling through a relapse of acute lymphocytic leukemia in 2011. His cancer was not responding to treatment, and he required at least a temporary remission to handle … Read more
When Roy Jann was diagnosed with cancer in 2013, it never crossed his mind that he would be a model for the life-saving potential of venetoclax, a new type of cancer drug that had recently entered human testing. The first inkling that something was amiss had come a few weeks earlier, while Jann was biking … Read more
By Philip Daley As someone who has lived in New Hampshire most of my life, I’ve always enjoyed being outdoors. When my friend James Bode hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in California a few years ago, I followed his progress on his blog and thought how cool it would be to try something similar someday. … Read more
Updated April 13, 2015 Venetoclax, a new type of cancer drug known as a Bcl-2 inhibitor, is showing great promise against a poor-prognosis form of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and could work in other cancers as well. Venetoclax, formerly known as ABT-199, attacks the protein molecule, Bcl-2, that allows cancer cells to survive despite signals … Read more
By Todd Ellison, MSW, LICSW I often tell people that the experiences I’ve had, however challenging, were necessary to make me who I am today. I am pretty happy with the person I turned out to be, and I think cancer had a lot to do with that. Back in 1997, I was living in … Read more
This post originally appeared on the Jimmy Fund Blog. In preparation for his first day of kindergarten, young Michael Sweetman visited his primary care physician. What they anticipated to be a routine checkup left Michael’s parents with more questions than answers. The very next day, the Sweetman’s visited Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorder Center, … Read more
While lymphomas and lymphocytic leukemias are both blood disorders, they are not the same disease. The main difference between lymphomas and lymphocytic leukemias is the location of the cancer cells. In leukemia, they’re found primarily in the bone marrow and blood; in lymphoma, they exist mainly in the lymph system, a network of tissues and … Read more
The past two years have seen a surge of new treatments for blood cancers, such as lymphoma, leukemia and multiple myeloma. Research on the genetic flaws underlying specific cancer types has led to new precision drugs such as ibrutinib and idelalisib and new immunotherapy agents that are improving outcomes in many patients with difficult-to-treat forms … Read more
Although treatments for childhood cancer patients are improving, cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease in children. Doctors and researchers are also focused on decreasing the toxicity of these treatments, which can have side effects years after a child finishes treatment. “The war against childhood cancer is hardly over,” says Kimberly Stegmaier, MD, … Read more
This post originally appeared on the Jimmy Fund blog. By Erica Equi “People would say ‘I feel bad for her’…I’m the same person I ever was, but better, stronger,” says 14-year-old Shannon Curley, reflecting on the time she spent in isolation treatment at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. “I wouldn’t change anything. I’ve … Read more
It looked like a scientific dead end – a clinical trial that found no benefit to a potential drug for a form of leukemia. But, like police detectives working a cold case, Dana-Farber scientists gathered hundreds of tissue samples that had been collected for the study – most of them languishing in laboratory cabinets, destined … Read more
Rapid Heme Panel, a new quick-turnaround genetic diagnostic test, at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center (DF/BWCC), offers some patients with aggressive blood cancers faster diagnoses, and treatments. Instead of sending blood samples to different laboratories for tests that return results in two weeks or more, Rapid Heme Panel puts the results in doctors’ hands in … Read more
In the treatment of blood cancers and disorders, doctors and researchers are focusing their sights on the immune system and how to bolster its ability to fight off diseases like leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma. “Understanding how you control the immune system is a big theme in treatment for these diseases,” says David A. Williams, … Read more
Thousands of people learn each year – usually after a routine blood test – that they have a condition that may develop into a blood cancer such as leukemia, lymphoma or multiple myeloma. The news is often followed by an equally surprising addendum: the condition won’t be treated until it becomes a full-fledged cancer. The … Read more
Hearing the words “you have cancer” can be hard enough, but what is it like to hear them echoed for a loved one? Having two cancer patients in one family calls for extra strength from everyone involved. Karen Perry was undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer when she and her husband Brian learned that their son … Read more