Dr. Charles Roberts has a photograph of Mary Eisnor hanging in his office so he never forgets what he’s fighting for.
Mary, whose family lives in Bridgewater, died in 2010 at the age of 8 of hepatoblastoma, a form of liver cancer.
Roberts, an associate professor in the department of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and in pediatric oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, attended Mary’s funeral.
“Every time we lose a patient to cancer it makes us want to go back and work that much harder,” Roberts said.
Roberts spends about 80 percent of his time running a research lab and 20 percent taking care of the kids who stand to benefit from that research.
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But we are only just beginning to understand how the human body works at the genetic level, Roberts said.
“It’s an incredibly complex choreography,” he said.
Roberts compared cancer to typos in a book – only the stakes are much higher.
“The mistakes that happen in genes are causing kids to die,” Roberts said.
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Roberts said childhood cancer research could absolutely benefit from more funding.
Pharmaceutical companies generally don’t focus on childhood cancer because there is not a large return on their investment, he said. That is due to the fact that – fortunately – childhood cancer is relatively rare, Roberts said.
Research companies also tend to be a little reticent to test drugs on children, so drugs tend to be tested on adults first, but the people developing treatment protocols for children are pediatric oncologists familiar with the unique needs of young patients, Roberts said.