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Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Exceeds Expected Outcomes for Stem Cell Transplants
Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center was ranked as one of 15 transplant centers in the country that performed above the expected survival rate, according to a new report.
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Genetic Testing, Precision Therapy Spell Success for Young Patient with Rare Syndrome
In a recent case study in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center describe how a drug targeting the genetic roots of the patient’s condition — an agent based on Nobel Prize-winning research by a Dana-Farber scientist — has caused new tumors in the patient to shrivel, her high blood pressure and headaches to ease, and her polycythemia to relent.
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FDA Approval Offers Hope For Prevention of Acute Graft-Versus-Host Disease
Based on a clinical trial led by Leslie S. Kean, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, the FDA has approved abatacept for the prevention of GVHD. This approval will allow many more patients to safely and effectively undergo stem cell transplants, particularly patients of diverse ethnicities who have more difficulty finding appropriately matched donors.
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Researchers Solve Mystery of Retinoic Acid’s Potency Against High-Risk Neuroblastoma
For decades, retinoic acid has been a key part of the arsenal against the childhood cancer neuroblastoma. For just as long, scientists have wondered exactly how it works.
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Targeted Agent Shows Early Promise Against a Dangerous Infant Leukemia
Leukemias involving reshuffling or rearrangement of the mixed lineage leukemia (MLL) gene, known as MLL-rearranged or MLL-r leukemias, account for 70 to 80 percent of acute leukemias in infants under one year old. In these blood cancers, a subset of acute myeloid and acute lymphoid leukemias (AML and ALL), the MLL gene breaks and reattaches to the wrong section of the chromosome.
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Looking for Cancer’s Achilles Heel: The Pediatric Cancer Dependency Map
Thanks to developments in precision medicine, some adult cancers are now treated with designer drugs that target the genetic mutations that caused them. But most children with cancer have not reaped the same benefits. Unlike adult cancers, childhood cancers carry few genetic mutations.
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Pediatric Fertility Preservation Program
At Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, we value the importance of fertility and reproductive health as it relates to long-term quality of life. As treatment for childhood cancers and blood disorders have improved, more and more survivors are entering their reproductive years and thinking about starting families of their own. The fertility preservation team will work closely with patients’ primary care team to ensure that a fertility consultation takes place as a part of the patient’s comprehensive work-up.