n. A rare cancer that gets little attention and little funding for research.
2010
When Kate became ill, with a rare cancer called clear cell sarcoma, she reacted practically, and generously. She started a fund for research and treatment of "orphan" cancers like hers and played benefit concerts with her children Rufus and Martha Wainwright to swell its coffers.
2009
The treatment is being tested at Stony Brook University Medical Center as a therapy for cancer of the appendix, a malignancy so rare it is known as an orphan cancer.
1993 (earliest)
He hates the thought of pet diseases, the idea that Americans whip out their checkbooks at the mere mention of some ailments while others go begging. Chest cancers, he says, are forgotten, orphan cancers.
For an orphan cancer drug, which was left gathering dust on a shelf for 20 years until the Aids virus came along, [AZT] is the classic rags to riches story.