Frequently asked questions

Answered by a team member at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

• What is your mission?

  The mission of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is to provide expert, compassionate care to children and adults with cancer while advancing the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of cancer and related diseases. As an affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a Comprehensive Cancer Center designated by the National Cancer Institute, the Institute also provides training for new generations of physicians and scientists, designs programs that promote public health particularly among high-risk and underserved populations, and disseminates innovative patient therapies and scientific discoveries to our target community across the United States and throughout the world.

• How are donations used?

  Your generous support fuels our focus on new discoveries and enables our care teams to deliver the expert, compassionate care that we provide our patients every day.

• What progress has been made already thanks to your donors?

  Profile, a research project launched by scientists at Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is one of the nation's most comprehensive personalized cancer medicine initiatives. Every patient's cancer contains a specific pattern of DNA mutations and other alterations — called a "tumor profile" — that can potentially be used to select individualized regimens of cancer therapies.

• What is the history of your organization?

  In 1947, Sidney Farber, MD, founded the Children's Cancer Research Foundation, dedicated to providing compassionate, state-of-the-art treatment to children with cancer while developing the cancer preventatives, treatments, and cures of the future.

  The foundation officially expanded its programs to include patients of all ages in 1969, and in 1974 became known as the Sidney Farber Cancer Center in honor of its founder. The long-term support of the Charles A. Dana Foundation was acknowledged by incorporating the Institute under its present name in 1983.