Memorial Sloan Kettering launches center for unique needs of adolescents, young adults with cancer

New York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has established a new center dedicated to better serving the specific needs of young cancer patients.

The Lisa and Scott Stuart Center for Adolescent and Young Adult Cancers aims to address the unique challenges faced by adolescent and young adult cancer patients by expanding access to clinical trials for this patient population, providing planning and fertility services, and personalized medicine. offer, according to a Sept. 27 press release.

Adolescent and young adult cancer patients fall into a unique group, often caught in a gap between adult patients and children. They are underrepresented in clinical trials because they sometimes do not meet the age requirements for adult or pediatric studies.

“These patients have not benefited as much from recent developments as those who are younger or older than them,” said Scott Stuart, chairman of the Boards of Trustees and Governing Trustees at Memorial Sloan Kettering. “We need to understand why and do better. This is the mission of the new Lisa and Scott Stuart Center for Adolescent and Young Adult Cancers.”

The center was made possible by a donation from Mr. Stuart and his wife Lisa, whose teenage daughter was undergoing treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

William Tap, MD, chief of the medical oncology service for Memorial Sloan Kettering’s sarcoma, and Julia Glade Bender, MD, vice president for pediatric clinical research at the cancer center, will lead the new Stuart Center.