Dana-Farber Cancer Institute history

1955 – Doctor Sidney Farber and colleagues achieve the first remissions in Wilms tumor of the kidney, a common form of childhood cancer.

1967 – Doctor David Nathan becomes Division Chief of the Hematology/Oncology Program at Boston Children’s.

1972 – Doctor Thomas Stossel publishes the first of many years of seminal studies that define the mechanism of phagocytosis.

1978 – Doctor Stuart Orkin develops restriction endonuclease mapping (genetic tests) to diagnose thalassemia in unborn children.

1985 – Doctor David Nathan becomes Chair of Pediatrics and Physician-in-Chief at Boston Children's Hospital.

1988 – Two out of every three children who enter the Jimmy Fund Clinic are cured.

The Dana-Farber Society started as a group of 90 individuals in 1990 and has grown to a community of more than 1,000 members across the globe.

1993 – A team at Boston Children’s Hospital led by Doctor Carlo Brugnara discovers that a common antifungal medication, clotrimazole, prevents dehydration in red blood cells, a factor in sickle cell disease.

1997 – Doctor Joanne Wolfe founds the Pediatric Advanced Care Team (PACT), a groundbreaking model pediatric palliative care program.

2000 – A study by Stephan Grupp, Lisa Diller, and colleagues finds that induction chemotherapy followed by tandem high-dose therapy and peripheral blood stem-cell rescue in rapid sequence significantly improve survival rates for children with high-risk neuroblastoma.

2001 – The Center for Experimental Medicine at Dana-Farber is established in efforts to convert laboratory advances into better treatments for patients.

2003 – A study by Doctor Holcombe Grier finds that the addition of ifosfamide and etoposide to standard chemotherapy greatly improves survival rates in patients with Ewing's sarcoma or primitive neuroectodermal tumor of bone.

2007 – Doctor Len Zon discovers that prostaglandin E2 greatly stimulates the growth of blood and probably other tissue stem cells.

Luigi Notarangelo, Sung-Yun Pai, and David Williams achieve the first successful treatment of severe combined immunodeficiency, commonly known as “Bubble Boy” Syndrome, by gene therapy in the US. 2011 – Drs.

2016 – A study by Doctor Lisa Diller finds that children with high-risk neuroblastoma whose treatment included two autologous stem-cell transplants were more likely to be free of cancer three years later than patients who underwent a single transplant.

In October 2017, the Institute embarked on the most ambitious fundraising campaign in its history to defy cancer.