Create a better life for patients

When Steve Craig was 19, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer that originates in the white blood cells. With chemotherapy and radiation he was able to become cancer-free and he went on to live a seemingly normal life.

Then, nearly 30 years after his original diagnosis, Steve began experiencing a frightening and painful new normal that is far too common among cancer survivors: He was suffering serious, late side effects from his curative cancer treatments. First it was the emergence of precancerous tumors on his thyroid, forcing removal of the entire gland; then a condition called aortic stenosis, caused by a buildup of calcium deposits on the aortic valve of his heart that required open-heart surgery. With the love and support of his wife, Susan Laine, also a lymphoma survivor, Steve, now 49, has persevered despite these debilitating setbacks.

As with Steve's lymphoma, the cure rates for many cancers have improved dramatically over the past decades, but the harsh reality is that too many cancer survivors suffer long-term side effects after they have been cured. New troubles may not take three decades to turn up - they can occur months or years after treatments are finished, sometimes as chronic conditions, sometimes acute and life-threatening, as for Steve, but always unacceptably reducing a patient's quality of life.

While research continues to seek new safe and effective drugs, what patients need now is for current therapies to be made less harmful without sacrificing their effectiveness. We must find answers and test them as soon as possible. We must take risks, be determined and courageous - funders, researchers, and patients alike - because survival is just the first part of the struggle to cure cancer; the quality of that survival matters, too.

Investment in research designed to discover the biological mechanisms that cause long-term and late treatment toxicities, and to develop and test interventions that prevent or at least significantly reduce these life-limiting toxicities, is essential.

As the success in pediatric cancer has shown, the goal is achievable. Years of research and clinical trials pushed survival rates to nearly 90 percent for some children with acute lymphocytic leukemia. But even years ago the medical and research community recognized that serious late effects were severely impacting some children's quality of life.

Consider the story of Andrew Sumpter, 4 years old when he was diagnosed with leukemia. His treatments saved his life but also left him with severe learning disabilities. Thanks to major intervention in school, backed by devoted and determined parents, Andrew is today a thriving 19-year-old high school graduate with a black belt in karate who is looking forward to community college. But his cognitive impairments still remain a fact of his life.

Thanks to research that led to the elimination of high-dose radiation treatments to the brain of most children with acute lymphocytic leukemia, severe cognitive deficits have been avoided for many children. Now the goal is to do for all cancer patients, no matter their age, what we've been able to achieve for these children - long-term survival with good quality of life.