Prevent Cancer Foundation Blog

December 2011 marks a milestone in the Federal commitment to the war on cancer. Forty years ago, the US Congress passed, and President Richard Nixon signed, the National Cancer Act of 1971, a bill which expanded our country’s national cancer program and gave the National Cancer Institute unprecedented authority and resources to begin a comprehensive approach to understanding and developing more effective tools to prevent and treat cancer. Today, several members of the United States Senate, ...

I was familiar with cancer as a survivor, having had a melanoma at age 27. I was familiar with cancer as a caregiver. My husband lost his battle to pancreatic cancer and my son, diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), underwent a successful stem cell transplant in 2004.  In all three cases, a symptom prompted each of us to get a checkup. In September 2009, I had my annual gynecological exam. My checkup was normal but ...

The day after Thanksgiving I saw a friend who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She’s completed four rounds of chemotherapy, lost her hair, and on some days her appetite.  She’s thinner and looks a bit frail, but her spirit is as strong as ever. Thankfully, she’s doing great. She has a sparkle in her eye and an unbelievable zest for life that would have killed her cancer if the chemo didn’t! She was thrilled to ...

[caption id="attachment_5752" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Janne Nappi, PhD"][/caption] The Foundation is proud to highlight the colon cancer research of Janne Nappi, PhD, an instructor of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Nappi received a two-year grant from the Foundation in Fall 2008 to improve the accuracy of computed tomographic colonography (CTC) by developing sophisticated computer algorithms to analyze the surface of the colon and indicate the locations of hard-to-detect flat growths that might develop into cancer. 1.  What ...