Spring 2025
By Kathy Clute
Photography by Sam Ogden
If you have a higher-than-normal risk of being diagnosed with a cancer, wouldn’t it be ideal to be monitored and treated by experts before the disease has a chance to develop or progress?
That is now possible, thanks to The Dana-Farber Campaign. Building on advances in genomics and data science, the Institute in 2023 established the nation’s first integrated clinical and research program devoted to detecting and intervening in conditions known to be precursors for cancer.
The new Centers for Early Detection and Interception (CEDI) represents a fundamental shift toward proactive cancer care. Most cancers are diagnosed when a person already has symptoms—often when the disease has already advanced and is harder to treat or cure. But CEDI’s clinicians and scientists are laser-focused on developing and deploying new technologies and methods for detecting the disease earlier and on discovering innovative ways to intercept cancer before it fully develops or progresses.
“People at higher risk for cancer—whether because of genetic conditions, family history, or a previous cancer—can come to CEDI and learn more about their risk as well as possible treatment options,” said Irene Ghobrial, MD, director of CEDI’s Center for Early Detection and Interception of Blood Cancers and the Lavine Family Chair for Preventative Cancer Therapies at Dana-Farber. “These may include lifestyle modifications, immunotherapy, and personalized precision medicine to stop the cancer before it’s symptomatic.”
BRCA center pioneers prevention and treatment
Dana-Farber’s Mellen and Eisenson Family Center for BRCA and Related Genes is one of the few places in the world dedicated to preventing, researching, and caring for BRCA-related cancers. People with mutations in the DNA repair genes known as BRCA1 and BRCA2 have a significantly higher risk of contracting various cancers, particularly those of the breast, ovaries, pancreas, and prostate.
A priority for the center is developing tests for ovarian and pancreatic cancers, which are often only detected at an advanced stage because of a lack of effective screening measures. Dipanjan Chowdhury, PhD, center co-director and the Svanberg Family Chair at Dana-Farber, has developed a technology that can interpret microRNA patterns in blood to predict whether an individual has or will develop ovarian cancer. It is being tested now with the goal of winning FDA approval for clinical use.
Using AI to detect pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer is typically discovered at a late stage, but innovations in genetic testing and artificial intelligence (AI) are making it possible to catch the cancer earlier before it has a chance to spread. At the Hale Family Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research, researchers are leveraging AI to:
• Develop a risk assessment tool that can comb through millions of electronic medical records to identify patients with symptoms that could be predictive of pancreatic cancer.
• Create an algorithm to identify very early pancreatic cancers on CT scans and other imaging tests.
• Apply novel deep learning techniques to large, single-cell genomic datasets to understand how pancreatic cancer cells change their identity to evade treatment.
Rapid blood test could save lives
Dana-Farber researchers have invented a rapid CRISPR-based molecular test that could enable more patients with two forms of leukemia to receive lifesaving treatments.
While major cancer centers can quickly diagnose acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) and chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), most hospitals must send blood samples to centralized labs and wait days or a week for results.
“It doesn’t matter if you have highly effective treatment for a disease if you can’t diagnose that disease,” said R. Coleman Lindsley, MD, PhD, director of the Edward P. Evans Center for MDS at Dana-Farber and senior author of the research published in Blood in 2024. “Patients who develop APL are at a high risk of death from bleeding if treatment isn’t begun promptly. With our test, an emergency room physician could know within a couple of hours if the patient should receive a medication that immediately reverses the risk of bleeding.”
The Institute’s Robert and Renée Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science is working to develop the technology into a commercial product.