11/24/2025
When Lenny Zakim was in treatment for multiple myeloma in the 1990s, one of his primary means of augmenting his chemotherapy and radiation came from home visits by his Tai Chi and Qigong instructor. Zakim dreamed of – and lobbied for – a central locale where he and other patients could manage their symptoms and improve their quality of life through this and other complementary therapies, such as acupuncture and massage, under the watchful eye of their oncologists.
In 2000, thanks largely to his persistence, the Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies and Healthy Living was established. At the time, the center occupied one small room near the lobby of the Dana building. During a recent 25th-anniversary event, Zakim Center faculty, staff, patients, and supporters celebrated its growth into a hub of clinical services, group programs, and transformative research – just steps from the large, state-of-the-art facility on Dana 1 that it now calls home.
“Lenny Zakim came to the leadership of Dana-Farber saying, 'We want a center that‘s not focused on finding new chemotherapy agents, but on helping people feel better by incorporating treatments that have been available for millennia to support patients as they go through therapy,’” Jennifer Ligibel, MD, director of the Zakim Center, told attendees at the celebratory event. “It was a radical concept, but very much in line with Dana-Farber’s long-term mission of not just treating cancer, but treating the patient and family as well. Over time, as the number of patients we treated grew, our footprint did as well, transforming into a beautiful center designed to be an oasis for patients going through the tumult of a cancer journey.”
Just as the Zakim Center’s physical size and patient population have expanded through the decades, so have its offerings. In addition to evidence-based practices such as acupuncture, massage, Tai Chi, meditation, and Qigong, the center now features exercise classes, strength training, one-on-one health coaching, dance and movement, and art and music therapy. Through the MyZakim online portal, patients and families can also access many of these programs virtually. Since 2020, the platform has had more than one million worldwide visits.
We were among the first cancer centers to combine integrative therapies with traditional Western oncology treatment, and have been a leader in conducting peer-reviewed, evidence-based research to prove their value when used in conjunction with traditional cancer treatment. The Zakim Center is a leader in research focused on both integrative therapies and healthy living, leading trials looking at the benefits of acupuncture, yoga, nutrition, exercise, and weight management in mitigating side effects of cancer treatment and improving outcomes – from quality of life to cancer recurrence and survival.
Today, most U.S. cancer centers provide some form of integrative therapy to their patients, supported by research conducted here. Ongoing projects led by Zakim Center co-directors Ligibel and Ting Bao, MD, MS, and its lead acupuncturist Weidong Lu, MB, PhD, hold the promise of establishing integrative therapies as a standard part of the care delivered to cancer patients everywhere.
Bao’s appointment as co-director in 2023 is a measure of this growth. Bao leads the Zakim Center’s integrative medicine consults program, building a clinic including an advanced practice coordinator and a clinical pharmacist to help patients navigate the most effective integrative therapies to incorporate into their cancer care, as well as to evaluate the safety of vitamins and supplements they may wish to take during treatment.
“Zakim Center research has proven what patients have told us, that integrative therapies actually helped reduce their nausea, pain, anxiety, fatigue, and other symptoms, and improve their quality of life,” stated Craig Bunnell, MD, MPH, chief medical officer, at the celebration. “That evidence has helped integrative medicine to enter the mainstream of oncology care – a place that it did not occupy 25 years ago. Cancer care is about more than chemotherapy, immunotherapy, surgery, and radiation, it’s about caring for the whole person – mind, body, and spirit. The Zakim Center has transformed the way we do that at Dana-Farber.”
Bunnell said Dana-Farber has fulfilled the vision of the late Lenny Zakim, who died in 1999 shortly after we announced the creation of the center that would bear his name. Zakim’s widow, Joyce, along with their children Josh, Deena, and Shari, were among attendees who spent the evening enjoying complimentary chair massages and ear acupuncture sessions, a dinner featuring healthy and creative dishes (and recipes) offered in Zakim Center nutritional consults, a poster presentation of research updates from Bao, and tours of the center’s clinical space.
Many past and current Zakim Center practitioners and leaders, including its first medical director David Rosenthal, MD, and former executive director Cynthia Medeiros, MSW, also attended the festivities. So was Lenny Zakim’s former Tai Chi instructor, Ramel “Rami” Rones, who has led Tai Chi, Qigong, and meditation in the Zakim Center for the last 25 years.
“The reach of the center is something I could never have envisioned because today, the center serves patients from all over the world in many different ways,” Joyce Zakim told the crowd. “Our veteran practitioners created the compassionate atmosphere that is being reinforced by newer professionals. The Zakim Center has an amazing team, and it’s inspiring to see their ability to convey the feeling of community to all patients who come to them knowing they will receive quality and compassionate care. It is a truly healing partnership, and Lenny would have loved to have seen how it’s developed.”
