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Team of specialists
Suzanne Shusterman, MD, got hooked on neuroblastoma care and research during a fellowship at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and joined the Dana-Farber staff to continue working on it.
Patients with advanced neuroblastoma require expert, specialized treatment with surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and blood stem cell transplants. In New England, a joint Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Boston (DF/CHB) team cares for an average of 20 to 30 neuroblastoma patients at any given time, most of them participants in clinical trials of new drug combinations and novel anticancer agents.
Lisa Diller, MD, of Dana-Farber, who heads the multidisciplinary program, says the past year has seen a surge of activity. A new physician-researcher who focuses on neuroblastoma, Suzanne Shusterman, MD, has joined the program, and several new clinical trials have begun or are being planned. "We also were approved to open a study on survivors," says Diller. "An increasing number of kids are surviving neuroblastoma, and we want to look at what's happening in terms of their growth, hormonal development, bone health, and other concerns." Shusterman, formerly of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, came to Boston thanks to a fellowship endowed by Friends for Life, a fundraising organization founded by Michael and Denyse Dodd, whose daughter, Isabelle, was successfully treated for neuroblastoma through Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Care.
"This work is incredibly rewarding. You help people through the worst times of their life, and a lot of kids are now happy and active and thriving."
—Suzanne Shusterman, MD
Neuroblastoma, according to Shusterman, "scientifically is a curious disease because it has different biological forms. Half the patients will do well with just surgery to remove the tumors. The other half have very aggressive disease, and many of them are not cured with current treatments." She's studying new approaches for those patients who relapse after their initially successful treatment.
In some cases, it is a blessing of sorts when neuroblastoma causes severe symptoms early on. Kane Goodman of Andover, Mass., was only three months old when his mother insisted on a series of tests to find the cause of his constant crying and leg weakness. Tracy Goodman says she persisted, even though doctors could find nothing wrong and speculated that he had acid reflux. Finally, a neurologist ordered imaging tests in February 2003 that revealed a neuroblastoma tumor woven around his spinal cord and compressing it, causing the leg weakness that quickly progressed to total paralysis.
Surgeons removed the tumor, and Kane underwent chemotherapy because some of the cancer cells remained, but today he's been cancer-free for nearly three years and is considered a childhood cancer survivor. "The paralysis saved his life," says his mother, though the toddler has yet to recover completely from the spinal cord damage. He wears braces on his legs and uses a wheelchair to get around; he's also mastering the use of a walker. "Day to day I worry less about his cancer coming back."
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