Winter 2024
By Colleen Sullivan
Photography by Michael Blanchard, Sam Ogden
When Tom McDonough was diagnosed with prostate cancer, he and his wife, Olivia, set to work to find the best oncologist in the country to lead his care team. A former health care executive, Tom approached this process the same way he did most things—in a very careful, efficient, and logical manner.
But when the couple met Mary-Ellen Taplin, MD, at Dana-Farber, it came down to a gut feeling.
“I just felt for the first time, ‘this is it, she’s the one,’” said Olivia. “When we walked out of the meeting I said to Tom, ‘She’s gonna be the Tommy Brady of our care team.’ She’s our quarterback.”
Taplin is a world-renowned expert in genitourinary cancer, balancing her time between compassionate patient care and cutting-edge research. Her work has been instrumental in understanding the mechanisms of prostate cancer response and resistance—a crucial component of developing next-generation therapies for this disease.
Inspired by their experiences at Dana-Farber, the McDonoughs wanted to make an impact on prostate cancer research that could change the paradigm of early detection, care management, and treatment for metastatic disease—and they found it in a unique collaboration between Taplin and Eliezer Van Allen, MD, chief of the Division of Population Sciences and the Chandra Nohria Family Chair for AI in Cancer Research at Dana-Farber and an expert in computational biology.
Van Allen’s work focuses on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to dissect high volumes of complex data directly from cancer patients and uses these insights to address major open questions in the field. He and Taplin are working together to harness the power of AI to accelerate the analysis of prostate cancer’s genomics, disease progression, and treatment resistance, as well as speed the development of novel therapeutic approaches.
Confident that this collaboration would yield results, the McDonoughs made a gift of nearly $1.3 million to establish the McDonough Endowed Fellowship in Metastatic Prostate Cancer Research and Artificial Intelligence—the first-ever fellowship that combines metastatic prostate cancer research with AI research at Dana-Farber.
“Olivia and I are not going to solve the riddle of metastatic prostate cancer, but we can contribute to the solution,” said Tom. “This project may never help me, but down the road there are going to be patients who can benefit. Everything we do in philanthropy is to fund programs that have a tangible impact.”
“Endowed fellowships provide resources that enable Dana-Farber to train the next generation of cancer researchers and clinicians,” said Taplin. “Eli and I are grateful for Tom and Olivia’s support—this fellowship is a unique opportunity and one that we feel will enable further progress in treating this difficult disease.”