Stanford Cancer Institute

“The field of oncology has been completely transformed from where it was 15 years ago — it’s almost like science fiction now,” said Steven Artandi, MD, PhD, the Laurie Kraus Lacob Director of the Stanford Cancer Institute. Lighting up hidden tumors with glowing dye, tricking cancer cells to self-destruct, rallying immune cells to rout malignancies – these are a few of the innovations researchers and clinicians are using to tackle cancer. Read more: https://stan.md/4ghLpdv #CancerResearch

The latest issue of Stanford Medicine magazine explores advances in cancer science, prevention, and care. Read the issue: https://stan.md/4hauivh #CancerResearch

Jessica Brown and Lindsay Parkinson have a lot in common. They spend their days taking care of young patients as Stanford Children's Health | Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford clinical nurses in the Bass Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Diseases. They both felt a calling to go to nursing school. During their oncology rotations, they signed up to be part of a national stem cell donor registry. And this year, they both received calls telling them they matched with someone and could give a stranger a second chance at life. “It was crazy,” Brown says. “What are the odds that not one, but two of us got contacted years after nursing school?” Stem cell transplants are used to treat people with life-threatening blood cancers, immune disorders, blood diseases, and metabolic conditions. These transplants replace a patient’s immune system with a new one from a donor. Often, this approach is the patient’s only hope for a cure. But only about 30 percent of patients have a matching donor in their family, so many patients rely on the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) to find a match from a stranger to save their life. Brown and Parkinson work with young cancer and stem cell transplant patients every day. Read more: https://bit.ly/4huiLqG #stemcelltransplant #bloodcancer

Check out the first episode of SCI on the Streets – "What do you like to do when you're not saving the world?" featuring Carolyn Bertozzi, PhD, Alyce Adams, PhD, Rob Negrin, MD, & Sabine Heitzeneder, MD. SCI on the Streets profiles the stories and personalities of our vibrant research community. Watch now: https://bit.ly/4jnreO2 #StanfordCancer

The Stanford Cancer Institute Office of Cancer Health Equity is dedicated to fostering and strengthening partnerships that improve research, education, and community outreach and engagement to reduce the cancer burden and cancer disparities.  . #HealthEquity #StanfordCancer

It was a privilege to have Catherine Wu, MD, from Harvard Medical School as our inaugural Wes Brown Seminar guest speaker for this month's Stanford Cancer Institute Breakthroughs in Cancer seminar. Her presentation, "From GvL to Personalized Vaccine and Back Again," is now available for viewing here: https://bit.ly/4jbJCt0

Congratulations to our SCI Awardees! We are thrilled to support their groundbreaking work in cancer research across basic, translational, clinical, and population-based disciplines. The Stanford Cancer Institute is proud to empower researchers shaping the future of cancer care. Learn more about the projects: https://stan.md/428VPZu #StanfordCancer #CancerResearch

Congratulations to Stanford Cancer Institute member Helen Blau, PhD, who President Biden awarded the National Medal of Science at The White House House for her work on cellular plasticity — a term describing how specialized cells in the body aren’t fixed in their identity but instead can be coaxed to assume new roles — and her discoveries concerning the biological mechanisms of stem cells, tissue regeneration, aging and rejuvenation of weakened muscles. Read more: https://stan.md/3Pxmzez #StanfordCancer

“I called back and it was Stanford Medicine saying, ‘Congratulations, you got into the Stanford University School of Medicine,’” he said. “I immediately called my mom and was able to share the news with people who were invested in my future. It was an incredibly cathartic moment.” Cathartic, as it’s been his dream to become a hematologist-oncologist, but also because it felt like the next chapter of his journey with cancer. In January 2016, when Ryan was a freshman in high school, he got injured during a soccer game. The pain persisted, so he went to see the doctor, where he got a blood test. “My white blood count was really, really high, so it wasn’t just the physical injury. I had leukemia.” Ryan was rushed to Stanford Children's Health | Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford, where they diagnosed him with CML, or chronic myelogenous leukemia, which is a type of cancer of the bone marrow. Read more: https://bit.ly/4gNdXMO #ChildhoodCancer #leukemia

Reena Thomas, MD, PhD, explains why glioblastoma and brain cancer can be challenging to treat and what innovations may help improve patients’ quality of life.