Every 15 seconds a new case of cancer is diagnosed in the United States, and the global burden of the disease is rapidly rising. Stanford is leveraging expertise across the university to advance research, technology, and care.
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Cancer patients enrolled in clinical trials at Stanford each year
Actively recruiting clinical trials, including 50 for children, as of April 2026
CAR-T therapies performed for adult and pediatric patients in 2024
Stanford’s bench-to-bedside-to-bench approach moves promising new treatments and therapies from the lab to the patients, as quickly as possible. This includes growing our capacity to expand access to innovative care and clinical trials for patients and communities.
New infusion treatments for adult and pediatric patients
Bone marrow transplants for adult patients
Infusion treatments for pediatric patients
Stem cell transplants for pediatric patients
Each year, Stanford Medicine enrolls 2,000+ adult and pediatric patients in cancer clinical trials, including a growing number of Phase 1 drug trials managed by the Early Drug Development Program.
These include first-in-human trials of therapies for rare cancers, which are often the most difficult to treat and typically, because of the relatively small number of patients, have not attracted the same level of investment and clinical study afforded more common diseases.
These early phase trials can be lifelines for patients who have exhausted other options and have led to extraordinary success stories.
Ollis’s Phase I clinical trial experience at Stanford provided hope in the face of a grim prognosis, and he now has a wife and twin children.
In 1955, Stanford radiologist Henry Kaplan worked with nuclear physicists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to develop the first medical linear accelerator in the Western Hemisphere, successfully treating the first patient — a 2-year-old boy with an eye tumor. Linear accelerators are now standard equipment in cancer centers worldwide.
A direct descendant of that original collaboration recently paired radiation oncologist Billy Loo with scientists at SLAC to invent a new class of highly efficient linear accelerators that deliver the radiation dose of an entire therapy session in less than a second. This reduces harm to healthy tissue without compromising its tumor-killing ability and could make possible more effective treatments by helping patients — especially those with difficult cancers like pancreatic, lung, or brain cancers — tolerate higher doses.
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A groundbreaking technology enables radiation delivery in a fraction of a second, potentially increasing treatment efficacy while better protecting healthy cells.
Proton therapy is a form of radiation treatment that uses positively charged subatomic particles rather than conventional x-rays to target and destroy cancer cells. One of the primary advantages over conventional radiation is a dramatic reduction in damage to healthy tissue and organs, which is especially important for pediatric patients. But the treatment requires a machine so large it could fill an entire building, and most hospitals do not have one. Enter two Stanford oncologists, who partnered with a medical technology company to develop a new version of the proton therapy unit that is dramatically smaller, more efficient, and easier to operate.
In early 2026, Stanford Medicine opened a new facility featuring the ultracompact proton therapy, enhancing accessibility to advanced treatment options.
The facility’s evolution could revolutionize cancer therapy, making proton treatment an option in many areas where it’s not currently available.
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The center is the first in the world to introduce ultracompact proton therapy, making advanced targeted radiotherapy more accessible to pediatric and adult patients.
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Joseph DeSimone is developing 3D-printed microneedle patches that, when applied to the skin for just five minutes, can painlessly draw out enough lymphatic fluid for liquid biopsies.
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Sylvia Plevritis is using AI to discover how healthy cells near cancer cells influence the disease.
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Steven Artandi studies cancer biology and what allows cancer cells to live and divide indefinitely. His work helps uncover the mechanisms that enable cancer to grow and persist.
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Stanford Medicine is planning the creation of a next-generation cancer center in Redwood City with a vision to radically transform the field by bridging innovative research with high-touch, personalized patient care. This facility will not just focus on treating patients but on setting new standards in cancer treatment, research, and education — all in one integrated space.
CAR-T therapy destroys cancer cells by engineering a patient’s own immune system to recognize and attack them. Stanford Medicine has become a national leader in this area, producing remarkable milestones.
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“I was literally on the verge of death ... I truly believe I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for the care I received at Stanford Hospital.”
Josie Fabian
A months-long cancer battle at Stanford Hospital inspired the undergraduate student to pursue her own research on CAR T-cell therapy. Read her story.
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2010: Provenge, a cell-based therapy for prostate cancer developed by Stanford Professor Edgar Engleman, became the first immunotherapy approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
2021: In a pre-clinical trial, Stanford researchers created a synthetic molecule that delivers immunotherapy directly to cancer cells intravenously. A single dose injected into laboratory mice with aggressive breast cancer induced complete tumor regression in five of 10 animals, and three appeared to be cured after just three doses.
2024: Stanford Medicine became the first center in the nation to treat a patient with advanced metastatic melanoma with an FDA-approved cell-based therapy for solid tumors.
2024: Stanford Medicine’s CAR-T cell therapy for pediatric brain tumors received FDA regenerative medicine advanced therapy designation, fast-tracking approval for a treatment that achieved complete tumor elimination in a patient with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a previously incurable brain cancer.
2025: Researchers used mRNA bundled in lipid nanoparticles to generate CAR-T cells inside the body rather than in a lab, and in mouse studies achieved 75% tumor-free survival with no signs of toxicity.
2026: Stanford scientists explore CAR-T cell therapy as a treatment for advanced ovarian cancer.
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Building on the longtime work of oncologist Tanja Gruber, Stanford led a national clinical trial testing a type of immunotherapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in infants, one of the most challenging forms of childhood cancer. Infant ALL is rare, representing only about 2–5% of all childhood ALL cases, but it accounts for a disproportionate share of treatment failures and deaths.
Two-year disease-free survival was 81.6% in the test group, compared to 49.4% in earlier trials; these are dramatic improvements for a disease that historically has had survival rates of 36% or less.
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Tanja Gruber explains how Stanford Medicine approaches the most common cancer among children ages 0 to 14.
One of the hardest problems in treating children with leukemia who need a stem cell transplant is finding a matched donor — many simply can’t. Stanford’s Alice Bertaina has pioneered an approach that changes who qualifies. She removes alpha/beta T cells — the immune system’s fighter cells — from the donor cells, which enables a child to have a successful transplant with half matched donor cells, like those from a parent. This method also reduces the risk of graft-versus-host disease and makes it safer for very medically fragile children to receive a stem cell transplant.
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Aggressive leukemia was stopped in its tracks by innovative cancer treatments at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health.
Some cancers have defied treatment for as long as doctors have attacked them, but now there may be hope for one of those: diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (or DIPG) — a brain tumor that is 100% fatal in children.
A new treatment developed at Stanford by Crystal Mackall and Michelle Monje entered a clinical trial recently with 11 patients, and many in the small cohort improved. Four of them had the volume of their tumors reduced by more than half, and in one case the tumor disappeared and the patient survived. More work is needed to make the treatments consistent and durable, but the promising early results bring some light into one of the darkest corners of cancer care. The FDA granted the therapy a Regenerative Medicine Advanced designation, placing it on a fast track to potential approval.
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CAR-T cells show promise against pediatric diffuse midline gliomas, brain and spinal cord tumors that are among the deadliest cancers, a Stanford Medicine trial found.
‘The first experiments produced just jaw-dropping results’
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