When she was almost 11, Kayla was mysteriously sick for two months. First her doctors thought she had a cold or mono, and then a stomach bug. Her blood work showed that her white blood cell count was through the roof.

What do you do when — after planning your life and working hard to achieve your dreams — your plans are interrupted by cancer?

One spring day in 2012, Janice woke up with a horrible headache. Because her mom had had a brain aneurysm at a young age, Janice paid attention and called her husband. By dinnertime that day, she was coming out of brain surgery.

Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers have made another step toward personalizing cancer treatment while reducing the toxicity of certain cancer drugs using simple, noninvasive blood tests.

From the day Roswell Park was founded in 1898, we’ve focused exclusively on understanding, preventing and treating cancer. But along the way, our work has led to major benefits for patients with other medical conditions — and created valuable tools for researchers in other fields of healthcare.

Christine Pieri graduated from nursing school on a Saturday and started work at Roswell Park the following Monday. In those early days, “I didn’t know much about oncology,” she says, “but once I got here, that became my passion."