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Research

  • Robert and Renée Belfer Office for Dana-Farber Innovations

    Lab Dishes1

    Cancer Immunotherapy: Dana-Farber has licensed a large patent portfolio covering PD-1 and PD-L1 to multiple pharmaceutical companies

    Array of tubes in lab

    Acetylon Pharmaceuticals, a Dana-Farber start-up company, has launched Regenacy Pharmaceuticals, as Celgene Corporation acquires Acetylon

    Myles Brown, M.D.

    Myles Brown, MD, director of our Center for Functional Cancer Epigenetics, has been elected to The National Academy of Sciences

    Ken Anderson, MD, in his lab

    C4 Therapeutics, a successful Dana-Farber start-up company, is harnessing the innate power of the body to control the quality of proteins within cells

    We are committed to building collaborative relationships with companies, investors, and entrepreneurs.

    Collaboration Opportunities

Innovations

  • In the Robert and Renée Belfer Office for Dana-Farber Innovations (BODFI), our mission is to facilitate the transfer of research innovations from the laboratory to the clinic through timely commercialization, and to help Dana-Farber investigators create these innovations through collaborations and relationships with industry.

    As a bridge between research and industry, BODFI is committed to building relationships with companies both large and small, with the investor community, and with entrepreneurs. Our goal is to create solutions.

  • At BODFI, we will:

  • Technology News

    Radiation Treatment Increases Cardiac Risk for Lung Cancer Patients

    As advances in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) extend patients’ lives, more of these patients are facing a different threat: adverse cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks and heart failure. A new retrospective study led by investigators from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, including senior author Raymond Mak, MD, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital examined outcomes for patients after receiving treatment for locally advanced NSCLC, finding that the average radiation dose delivered to the heart was associated with an increased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events and death. Among patients who did not have preexisting coronary heart disease, risk of having a major cardiovascular event after treatment exceeded the rates of people considered at high risk of such events. The team’s findings are published in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

    Pre-Surgical Immunotherapy Shows Promise in Trial for Patients with Early Stage Lung Cancer

    For patients with operable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), pre-surgical “neoadjuvant” treatment with an immune checkpoint inhibitor was well tolerated and, in many cases, caused significant tumor cell death in a large, multicenter clinical trial involving investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and nine other research centers. Participants in the trial had surgically removable NSCLC ranging from stage IB to IIIB. Patients were treated with two cycles of atezolizumab, which blocks the PD-L1 immune checkpoint protein on some cancer cells, then had surgery to remove the lung cancer tissue.

    “Immune checkpoint therapy is included as a standard of care for patients with advanced (metastatic) lung cancer, and this study suggests that it may also have benefit in early stage, operable lung cancer,” said the study’s lead author, David Kwiatkowski, MD, PhD, senior physician at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center.