Spring 2025
By Stephanie Lowitt
Photography by Sam Ogden
Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation, is on a mission to accelerate breakthroughs in lifesaving research and empower people everywhere to conquer cancer. The foundation recently awarded a total of $550,000 to five Dana-Farber physicians pursuing novel treatment approaches.
Approximately 80% of gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs), a rare cancer that forms in the wall of the intestinal tract, are driven by mutations in a specific gene. Tyrosine kinase inhibitor drugs (TKIs) can inhibit tumor growth, but patients can experience resistance to approved single-agent TKIs, and combinations of those TKIs are toxic. Candace Haddox, MD, is researching targeted therapies including a novel TKI combination, to assess its effect on GISTs and on patients’ quality of life.
Praful Ravi, MB, BChir, MRCP, is conducting the first-ever trial evaluating a new therapy for metastatic, castrate-resistant prostate cancer, an incurable disease with an average survival of 1-3 years. He is exploring a combination of targeted radioactive materials and carboplatin, a radiosensitizer that makes tumor cells easier to kill, while working to minimize damage to healthy tissue.
While over 80% of pediatric cancer patients become long-term survivors, they later experience cardiovascular mortality 7 times higher than the general population; and survivors of color experience twice that rate in large part due to social inequities like food insecurity. To refine a “food is medicine” intervention, Rahela Aziz-Bose, MD, is working to establish one of the first health equity interventions addressing disparities in longer-term pediatric cardiovascular health, an essential step toward survivorship equity.
Rosemarie Mastropolo, MD, is exploring how to improve the therapeutic patient-clinician relationship for adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer patients, who experience challenges that are different from those of younger or older patients due to the varying degrees of patient independence and involvement of the caregiver in their treatment. This study will help define and measure the ideal patient-caregiver-clinician relationship for AYAs.
Erica Pimenta, MD, PhD, is studying how insulin-like growth factor 1, a hormone that helps with growth, metabolism, and other bodily functions, may improve outcomes for patients with liposarcoma, a rare, malignant cancer that develops in fat cells and is the second most common soft tissue sarcoma.