On the cusp of Chad Palumbo’s senior year of high school in 2022, he found himself in an unexpected place: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Chad had been diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of soft tissue cancer that appears mainly in children and teens.
Together with his parents, Keith and Jennifer, Chad navigated treatment for this diagnosis and learned about the urgent need to develop better, more targeted therapies for rhabdomyosarcoma. Due to a lack of funding from traditional sources, research for rare cancers like this relies on philanthropic support. The Palumbos were eager to discover what would be possible with additional funding.
“There was a study that was done just months before Chad was diagnosed that showed that undergoing chemotherapy for six months, instead of 12, was just as effective,” said Keith. “That was a meaningful change—without that study, his experience would have been a lot worse. We realized there was an opportunity to support additional research that could make an immediate difference for patients.”
With a generous gift, the Palumbos established the Palumbo Family Fund for rhabdomyosarcoma Research and the Palumbo Family Fund for Pediatric Clinical Care. The first portion of their gift will support efforts led by Kimberly Stegmaier, MD, to bring precision medicine, a treatment approach intended to identify and target specific mutations driving a patient’s tumor, to pediatric patients with rare sarcomas.
“While this approach has revolutionized treatment for other types of cancers, a lack of funding has slowed progress on rare pediatric cancers like rhabdomyosarcoma,” said Stegmaier, who is the co-director of the Pediatric Hematologic Malignancies Program and the Ted Williams Chair at Dana-Farber. “The Palumbos’ gift enables us to further study promising new therapies for this disease.”
The second portion of the family’s gift will help launch a first-of-its-kind program that provides pediatric patients with rare or difficult-to-treat cancers personalized, coordinated access to clinical specialists and cutting-edge research across Dana-Farber under the direction of Allison O’Neill, MD.
“The Palumbos’ gift will empower patients with rare cancers to take full advantage of Dana-Farber’s expansive clinical care infrastructure, and bring the latest scientific advances to them at the earliest point in their treatment journey,” said O’Neill.
Today, Chad is thriving as a student-athlete at Princeton University, where he plays lacrosse. The Palumbos are pleased to share that regular visits to Dana-Farber have continued to show clean scans.
“Walking into Dana-Farber, where they have full confidence in what you’re facing, there’s such a sense of comfort,” said Jennifer. “At one of the scariest times in your life, they know what they’re dealing with and are able to communicate in a way that gives you hope.”
For more stories about the impact of philanthropy at Dana-Farber, please visit DanaFarberImpact.org.