Honoring her daughter
Edited by Debra Bradley Ruder
A portrait of her late daughter Molly, taken the summer before she died, helps motivate Megan Hanna in her work as a data analyst at Dana-Farber's Center for Cancer Genome Discovery. (Molly is at left in the portrait.
When Megan Hanna sits at her desk in Dana-Farber's Center for Cancer Genome Discovery, the nearby portrait of her daughter Molly offers more than a photographic tie to her family. It represents Hanna's inspiration for her second career.
Molly Hanna was a beautiful, kind, strong-willed, and optimistic young woman who died in February 2002 at age 18 after three-and-a-half years of treatment for neuroblastoma, a rare cancer of the nervous system. During that time, her mother stayed by her side, researching treatment options and accompanying her to appointments and procedures at Dana-Farber's Jimmy Fund Clinic, Children's Hospital Boston, and around the country.
Some of the scientific material was baffling to Hanna, who was then a graphic designer. In her overwhelming grief after Molly's death, Hanna went back to school to better understand the biology and chemistry behind the illness that claimed her middle child. Today, she is a data analyst at the genome center, where she works with clinicians and researchers who are seeking to mine genetic data from tumor samples for various studies. In October, Hanna contributed to a significant paper in the journal Nature about a newly discovered set of genetic mutations in neuroblastoma patients.
"Megan's experience shows that if you have the motivation, you can do something pretty extraordinary professionally," says center Co-director Matthew Meyerson, MD, PhD, who hired Hanna as a summer intern five years ago and then brought her on full time. "She's a great biological data analyst, and she is very highly motivated to help people with neuroblastoma and all cancers. She's driven forward a lot of our work on neuroblastoma."
Hanna's desire to advance the cause also inspires her to ride in the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge bike-a-thon for Dana-Farber and its Jimmy Fund. This past year, Hanna and Molly's father (Megan's ex-husband), Doug, raised $20,000 to support neuroblastoma research at the Institute.
Paths of Progress writer Debra Bradley Ruder sat down with Megan Hanna last fall at her research group's high-tech offices at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. Her story follows on the next few pages.
