Friends of Dana-Farber

11/18/2025

Friends holiday cards are back! Wish your friends and family a bright holiday season and support research and patient care programs through the Friends of Dana-Farber! Thanksgiving and winter holiday cards are available now! https://dana-farberholiday.ourproshop.com/

11/18/2025

This week we’re celebrating holiday hospitality at Dana-Farber.

Every year, just before Thanksgiving, our incredible Friends of Dana-Farber volunteers fill the halls and gathering spaces with festive touches such as decorated trees, menorahs, wreaths, and other signs of the season.

These simple acts of care bring warmth, hope, and joy to patients, families, and staff during challenging times. It’s a beautiful tradition focused on one goal: creating comfort when it’s needed most.

11/07/2025

The Friends of Dana-Farber have always been dedicated to both groundbreaking research and compassionate patient care! We know that true healing means meeting physical, emotional, and social needs simultaneously - and we are incredibly grateful to all who supported our fundraising events throughout the year help provide vital support for our patient services grants.

Our latest grants fund critical support for those who need it most:
- Free legal help for low-income immigrant patients to remove barriers to care
- Emergency aid for food, rent, and transportation
- Treatment support including medication co-pay and scalp cooling assistance

And programs serving all patients:
- Spiritual health care
- Youth patient support groups
- Care bags for those experiencing hair loss from treatment
- Friends Patient Gift Bags
- Friends Art Program/Collection

📸 by

11/03/2025

In our 50 years at Dana-Farber, the Friends have consistently focused on supporting patients with breast cancer and research to make their quality of life and treatment protocols better. Having celebrated Breast Cancer Awareness in October we think it is timely to share some of the programs we have proudly supported over the years:
🚙Dana-Farber’s first Mammography Van and later van outreach programs to increase breast cancer screenings among historically underserved populations, including Hispanic, Latina, and Asian women.

🛍️ Friends Place care bags that include products helpful for breast cancer patients as they go through treatment – soft caps for people experiencing hair loss, information on products and services available, gloves to help with neuropathy, and more.
🫶Funding to help some of our most vulnerable patients access scalp cooling in order to keep their hair and maintain their identity even while undergoing treatment.

The Friends were proud to support Heather Parsons, MD, MPH, as she was getting started in breast cancer research who had this to say: “Friends was an incredible resource for my work just as it - and I - was getting off the ground. The funding led to a paper that has laid the foundation for additional work - clinical trials and NIH-funded. Without Friends, this would have been challenging.”

Judith Agudo, PhD, has also received funding to support her immunotherapy research in breast cancer: “I was starting my lab and the funding allowed me to start a very exciting project in breast cancer that otherwise would have not been possible. This grant allowed me to establish models to study breast cancer in the lab and became the seed of a whole breast cancer immunology program in the lab. We are working to improve breast cancer immunotherapy.”

We recently named Tess O’Meara, MD, MHS, Friends Fellow 2025-2026. We’ll be supporting her work to uncover the biological reasons why some patients with breast cancer respond better than others on certain treatment protocols.

10/17/2025

This week in our countdown, we’re reflecting on our incredible Board of Directors.

Fifty years ago, The Friends of Dana-Farber were founded by a group of visionary women who believed in the power of community, compassion, and philanthropy to make a difference. Two of those incredible founders still serve on our board today, a testament to the dedication and spirit that continue to define The Friends.

Over the past five decades, hundreds of women have followed in their footsteps, each bringing their own passion, creativity, and generosity to our mission. Together, they’ve built a lasting legacy of hope, funding critical research, supporting patient care, and creating a community rooted in kindness and purpose.

As we celebrate this milestone 50th year, we reflect with gratitude on all those who have shaped The Friends into what it is today. We honor the women who started it all, the volunteers and donors who keep it thriving, and the next generation who will carry our mission forward.

Here’s to 50 years of friendship, philanthropy, and impact — and to the many more still to come. 💛

10/15/2025

Artist Spotlight: Since 1973, Jesús Matheus has studied the art of printmaking, both in his native Venezuela, as well as Brazil. His paintings and drawings reflect this graphic background through their linear and textural layers.
 
Matheus executes drawings, paintings, and installations that evoke a history culled from the artist’s research on culture and ethnicity, his expeditions throughout South America, and other personal experiences. He cites modern Latin American artists such as Joaquin Torres-Garcia and Wifredo Lam, as well as indigenous and pre-Columbian craft and folk art, as strong influences on his geometrically minimalist artist production.
 
Matheus taught drawing and printmaking at the Armando Reverön Institute in Caracas and has exhibited extensively throughout South America and internationally. The artist’s work is part of several public and private collections, including the Cisneros Foundation and the Carlos Cruz-Diez Museum of Illustration and Design in Venezuela, the Wilfredo Lam Center in Cuba, and the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York.
 
Jesús Matheus lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.

10/10/2025

This week in our countdown, we’re thrilled to spotlight one of the most meaningful moments of our year, which is awarding new grants to support Dana-Farber’s lifesaving work. 🎉
At our Friends Annual Board Meeting, we proudly presented our annual gift to Dr. Ben Ebert, President of Dana-Farber, alongside remarks from both Dr. Ebert and our Friends Co- Presidents, Helen Lin & Carrie Wilson.
Every dollar we raise goes directly to DFCI through a competitive grant process, helping fund early-stage research, rising investigators, and vital patient care programs that often go unfunded elsewhere.
💥 FY2025 Impact Highlights:
$1.27M raised through fundraising & endowments
$6M contributed directly by our members
$7.27M in total support for DFCI
👉 Swipe to see where this year’s funding is headed in FY2025–26! Visit our website to see a full list of funding.
We’re so grateful to our community - every gift makes a difference. 💙

10/09/2025

10/03/2025

This week we’re looking back at some of our tastiest events with Chef Jeremy Sewall.

The Friends met the Lisa and Jeremy Sewall through our Chefs Cooking for Hope event in 2009 – though let’s be honest, many Friends already knew them from their wonderful Brookline restaurant, Lineage.

The Sewalls participated in Chefs Cook for Hope until the event ended in 2016 (through Lineage and then Island Creek Oyster Bar and Row 34). Through their efforts, and efforts of other generous chefs, that event raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support research and patient care at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Chef Jeremy became involved with our annual gala events in 2015 as an auction donor, and later hosted Dinner with Friends from 2017 to 2022. Dinner with Friends was an incredible event that combined the best of our now-retired Chefs Cooking for Hope events and our gala evenings, and helped us raise more than $2 million over the years.

Last year, Friends were invited by Chef Jeremy and his partner, Shore Gregory, to be a large part of Row 34’s 10th birthday celebrations. It was only fitting that we kicked off our 50th Anniversary Year celebrations this past weekend at… Row 34!

Don’t forget to save the date – our 50th Birthday Gala will take place on June 6, 2026 and you won’t want to miss it! 🎉

09/30/2025

Friends sponsors came together to kick off the Friends of Dana-Farber’s 50th year! We were honored to begin this milestone celebration with words from Dr. Benjamin Ebert, DFCI President and CEO. Friends also welcomed Dr. William Hahn, DFCI Chief Operations and Transformation Officer. We can’t wait to celebrate 50 years of impact alongside our Friends, volunteers, donors, and supporters who make our mission possible. Link to all event photos, thanks to , in bio!

Save the date: our 50th Birthday Gala will take place on June 6, 2026 - you won’t want to miss it! 🎉

09/26/2025

September is Gynecologic Cancer Awareness Month, a time to recognize the critical work being done to advance care and research for ovarian, cervical, and uterine cancers.

Over the years, Friends has been honored to support early-career investigators while celebrating the work of senior leaders. A great example is our support of Dr. Sarah J. Hill, physician scientist at Dana-Farber and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Dr. Ursula Matulonis, MD, chief of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology and the Brock-Wilson Family Chair at Dana-Farber. Dr. Hill has received grants from Friends supporting her research in gynecologic cancers. As part of our 50 Years in 50 Weeks series, we’re sharing pictures from Dr. Hill speaking at a Friends Funders Forum and our 2024 event, An Evening with Friends, during which Dr. Matulonis was a panelist.

Speaking to the power of Friends, Dr. Hill said “I am a junior independent investigator at Dana-Farber, and the Friends funding I have received as I started my lab and built my independent research program has been instrumental at every step of the way. I have used my Friends funding to buy the reagents to start my lab, put out my very first independent paper, and publish three additional papers on women’s cancer that would have been hard to fund any other way. The work I have been able to do with my Friends funding has helped me establish foundational projects and reagents for my lab focusing on women’s cancer, and I will be forever grateful!”
For nearly 50 years, Friends has believed in the power of investing in people. Stories like Dr. Hill’s show just how far that support can go and highlight the importance of funding innovative research that drives progress in women’s cancers. 💜