Immunotherapy, genomic profiling, and investigating game-changing drug therapies topped the list of most important cancer research and clinical developments at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2014.
In a major advance in the care of patients with leukemia and other blood disorders, physicians at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center have begun using Rapid Heme Panel, a high-tech genetic test that provides, within a matter of days, an unprecedented amount of critical information to aid the choice of treatment.
As more patients choose to spend their final days and weeks in hospice care rather than a hospital, the hope is the use of intensive and costly hospital services would decline. A new study by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers shows for one group of terminally ill cancer patients, that is not what is happening.
More women are having ovary-removing surgery as a cancer prevention measure, but many are often unaware of sexual or psychological side effects of the procedure. A new study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute shows a half-day educational program can help successfully deal with these issues by educating women on how to address them.
Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other institutions have discovered a sign of the early development of pancreatic cancer – an upsurge in certain amino acids that occurs before the disease is diagnosed and symptoms appear. The research is being published online today by the journal Nature Medicine.
Led by Dana-Farber scientists, a large DNA analysis of people with and without pancreatic cancer has identified several new genetic markers that signal increased risk of developing the highly lethal disease.
Men with newly diagnosed metastatic, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer lived more than a year longer when they received a chemotherapy drug as initial treatment instead of waiting to for the disease to become resistant to hormone-blockers, report scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Eastern Co-operative Oncology Group.
Significant improvement with the use of a combination drug therapy for recurrent ovarian cancer was reported at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago.
Dana-Farber researchers have identified antibodies against the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome that could lead to prevention/treatment for the virus with a 40% mortality rate
In 2004, a team of Dana-Farber doctors discovered a gene mutation that could treated by a drug on the market for something else. This discovery transformed the way lung cancer is treated and began an era of precision medicine for lung cancer.
Based on results of a clinical trial led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first targeted drug as treatment for advanced stomach cancer.
A new study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute suggests that not all doctors are ready to embrace tests that look for hundreds of DNA changes in patients’ tumor samples, while others plan to offer this type of cancer gene testing to most of their patients.
A patient with advanced bladder cancer in a phase I trial had a complete response for 14 months to a combination of the targeted drugs everolimus and pazopanib, and genomic profiling of his tumor revealed two alterations that may have led to this exceptional response
With March marking Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, here are the answers to some key questions about Colon cancer.
A study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Weill Cornell Medical College shows terminal cancer patients who receive chemotherapy in the last months of their lives are less likely to die where they want and are more likely to undergo invasive medical procedures than those who do not receive chemotherapy.
Nivolumab, a drug that unleashes the immune system to attack cancer, has shown to produce lasting remissions and hold the disease in check – for more than two years, in some cases – in many patients with advanced melanoma, according to a new study by Dana-Farber researchers and colleagues.
A normal enzyme called SYK pairs with FLT3, the most commonly mutated enzyme in acute myelogenous leukemia, to promote cancer growth & resistance to treatment with FLT3-blocking drugs. In mouse model, treatment with a drug combination to inhibit both enzymes worked better than either drug alone.
Study of long-term survival of children with most common pediatric brain tumor finds almost 90 percent are alive 20 years later and few died from the tumor as adults. However, children treated with radiation had significantly lower long-term survival rates than children who were not radiated.
Dana-Farber researchers have found that a combination of two already-in-use drugs may have an effect on stopping the growth of the most common genetic subtype of lung cancer setting the stage for clinical trials.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists have developed a mathematical model to predict how a patient’s tumor is likely to behave and which of several possible treatments is most likely to be effective.
Scientists have identified a mutated gene that causes a type of tenacious, benign brain tumor that can have devastating lifelong effects. Currently, the tumor can only be treated with challenging repeated surgeries and radiation.
In a prime example of finding new uses for older drugs, studies in zebrafish show that a 50-year-old antipsychotic medication called perphenazine can actively combat the cells of a difficult-to-treat form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The drug works by turning on a cancer-suppressing enzyme called PP2A and causing malignant tumor cells to self-destruct.
Researchers from the Boston area, Mexico, and Norway have completed a comprehensive genomic analysis of cervical cancer in two patient populations.
In a nationwide study of women with “triple-negative” breast cancer, adding the chemotherapy drug carboplatin or the angiogenesis inhibitor Avastin to standard chemotherapy drugs brought a sharp increase in the number of patients whose tumors shrank away completely, investigators will report at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
Women being treated with breast cancer drugs known as aromatase inhibitors can markedly ease the joint pain associated with the drugs by engaging in moderate daily exercise, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Yale University investigators report in a study to be presented during the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
In a new study, women with relatively small, HER2-positive breast tumors who received a combination of lower-intensity chemotherapy and a targeted therapy following surgery or radiation therapy were very unlikely to have the cancer recur within a few years of treatment, investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and other research centers will report at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
A toxin linked to a targeted monoclonal antibody has shown “compelling” antitumor activity in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphomas who were no longer responding to treatment, according to a report from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common form of pediatric cancer, can safely receive intravenous infusions of a reformulated mainstay of chemotherapy that has been delivered via painful intramuscular injection for more than 40 years, research suggests.
In nearly one-third of patients with Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia, a specific genetic mutation switches on the disease, and a new drug that blocks the defective gene can arrest the disease in animal models, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and allied institutions will report at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). The finding may open the way to clinical trials of the drug in Waldenstrom’s patients whose tumor cells carry the mutation.
Adding bortezomib (Velcade) to standard preventive therapy for graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD) results in improved outcomes for patients receiving stem-cell transplants from mismatched and unrelated donors, according to researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) who were as old as 74 fared as well with stem cell transplantation as did patients in the 60-to-65 age range, according to a study from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology.
Some babies diagnosed with and treated for a bone marrow failure disorder, called Diamond Blackfan Anemia, may actually be affected by a very rare anemia syndrome that has a different disease course and treatment, say scientists from Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.
Researchers reported promising outcomes data for the first group of boys with X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome, a fatal genetic immunodeficiency also known as “bubble boy” disease, who were treated as part of an international clinical study of a new form of gene therapy. Its delivery mechanism was designed to prevent the leukemia that arose a decade ago in a similar trial in Europe.
In the largest study of its kind, people who ate a daily handful of nuts were 20 percent less likely to die from any cause over a 30-year period than were those who didn’t consume nuts, say scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Harvard School of Public Health
The Joint Center for Cancer Precision Medicine, a collaborative initiative among Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has been established to create “precision medicine treatment pathways” for patients with advanced cancers and to speed the development of personalized therapies.
Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the University of Colorado Cancer Center report on a gene fusion that spurs the cells to divide rapidly. Treating the cells with a compound that blocks the protein caused the cells to die which may offer a targeted therapy in patients.
A protein that is increased by endurance exercise has been isolated and given to non-exercising mice, in which it turned on genes that promote brain health and encourage the growth of new nerves involved in learning and memory, report scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.
A research team from Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and other institutions has discovered a new genetic target for potential therapy of sickle cell disease (SCD). The target, called an enhancer, controls a molecular switch in red blood cells called BCL11A that, in turn, regulates hemoglobin production. The researchers—led by Daniel Bauer, MD, PhD, and Stuart Orkin, MD, of Dana-Farber/Boston Children's—reported their findings today in Science.
A survey of young women with breast cancer found that many often overestimate the odds that cancer will occur in their other, healthy breast, and decide to have the healthy breast surgically removed even though most understood that removing both breasts does not extend their survival.
More than 5,000 genetic profiles of tumor DNA have been completed in a large research study by scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Boston Children’s Hospital designed to speed the development of personalized cancer care with precision treatments.
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and Lisa Diller, MD, chief medical officer of Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, advises parents to remain positive.
Dr. Weeks, a prominent researcher at Dana-Farber, internationally known for building the discipline of outcomes research in oncology and admired by colleagues as an outstanding mentor, died on September 10.
A team from Harvard and Dana-Farber has launched a Phase I clinical trial of a therapeutic melanoma vaccine designed to reprogram a patient's immune system to destroy tumors. The vaccine consists of a small disk-like, biodegradable sponge that's infused with signaling molecules and components of the patient's tumor.
A new study has revealed marked differences in the genomic terrain of the two most common types of cervical cancer, suggesting that patients might benefit from therapies geared to each type’s molecular idiosyncrasies.
An international study led by Dana-Farber scientists found that the oral targeted drugs pazopanib (Votrient) and sunitinib (Sutent), approved for metastatic kidney cancer worked equally well, but one proved superior in tolerability.
Dana-Farber scientists report in the Journal of Clinical Investigation they have developed a tumor vaccine based on the patient’s tumor to create a strong and selective immune response in some chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients.
New research finds that almost two-thirds of female survivors of childhood cancer who tried unsuccessfully for at least a year to conceive eventually got pregnant.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute was named a “Leader in LGBT Healthcare Equality” in the Healthcare Equality Index 2013, an annual survey conducted by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the educational arm of the country’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organization.
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