Kristen Dahlgren Left “Today ”to Reshape the Future of Cancer Research. Then an Old Friend Made a Life-Changing Call (Exclusive)

• Former Today correspondent Kristen Dahlgren left her journalism career to launch a cancer vaccine nonprofit following her own diagnosis with stage 2 breast cancer in 2016

• When NBC announced her departure, she came across a comment with a familiar name on the news story

• That comment would lead Dahlgren to reconnect with her childhood best friend, and lead her longtime friend to offer a sizable donation to Dahlgren's initiative

When former Today correspondent Kristen Dahlgren left her journalism career to launch a cancer vaccine nonprofit, a single comment on the story announcing her departure would change her life — and potentially the lives of millions diagnosed with cancer.

Dahlgren, now 52, learned that she had stage 2 breast cancer in 2016, a diagnosis that shifted the trajectory of her life.

Following her diagnosis and treatment, Dahlgren and her family uprooted from New York to central Vermont during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, they live on 75 acres of land with baby goats and plenty of space to roam. "We have no idea what we're doing but it's fun," she tells PEOPLE with a laugh.

"Cancer really changed me and I reprioritized and I was like, I want to raise my kid in the country, with a bit of a slower pace," she says. "I don't want a two-hour commute every day. It made me reassess in a lot of fronts — it was a complete 180."

Related: NBC News' Kristen Dahlgren Found Her Breast Cancer After Reporting on Rare Symptoms  

Among the other new priorities that cancer made clear was a focus on how she might help others who, like her, have treated the disease with rounds of grueling chemotherapy and radiation; the hope that there might be a better way, as she explains.

"I heard about the cancer vaccines in development in probably 2021, after I was diagnosed," she says. "And I thought, 'That can't be true because surely we would see the headlines everywhere.' As a medical reporter, I'm really good at looking at data and speaking to scientists ... and I decided to do some digging."

What Dahlgren learned was that a range of vaccines to target different types of cancers are not only in development, but already in phase 2 clinical trials. During the pandemic, with the development of the COVID-19 vaccines, "our understanding of vaccine technology really accelerated," she says.

"We're at a tipping point right now," she continues. "We have all the pieces, we understand what we can target on cancer, we understand how to create an immune response to a cancer cell. And we have the same and effective technology to deliver it."

What we don't have, she says, is proper funding to ensure the vaccines can be approved.

"These vaccines are real, we just need to go through the approval process — and that's where we're stuck. Medical trials are expensive," she says.

So she launched the Cancer Vaccine Coalition, a nonprofit that serves as something of a hub to bring together all the various stakeholders in cancer vaccine development. In addition to engaging stakeholders and creating awareness around the vaccines, the coalition works to fund clinical research trials — and, in a moment of kismet, the funding got a boost thanks to an article about Dahlgren.

Dahlgren is quick to point out that cancer vaccines work differently from other vaccines (like those for COVID-19 or HPV), in that they are currently meant to be part of a treatment plan, rather than preventative — though there's hope that, with time and more scientific study, the latter might one day be a possibility, too.

"They're not targeting a virus," she explains. "It really is giving your cells what they need to look for to find and fight cancer cells ... so they can mount an immune response and eliminate the disease. This is different from a vaccine that you get as a child. These are meant to be an alternative or a supplement to current cancer treatments. And let's be honest: our current treatments are barbaric."

Related: NBC's Kristen Dahlgren Reveals Her Cancer Recovery 'Has Been Infinitely Harder' Than Treatment

Her own treatment plan, Dahlgren says, was grueling and included chemotherapy, radiation and a double mastectomy.

"I had both of my breasts cut off — that's an amputation. I'm numb. I don't feel parts of my body, it's something I live with every day. I still have trouble lifting my arm from the surgery," she says. "I have lymphedema — swelling — in my right arm. The chemotherapy puts me at higher risk of lung disease, I have lung fibrosis from the radiation. I would choose in an instant to get a vaccine to train my immune system to fight the cancer so that if it ever showed up again, I wouldn't have to go through all those things again."

Dahlgren left the Today show at the end of January 2024 with a vision of accelerating cancer vaccines. Shortly after an article about Dahlgren's new focus was published, she was reading the comments when she saw one from a familiar name.

"There was a comment from a nurse at the Brian T. Jellison Cancer Hospital in Sarasota, Florida. The name rang a bell — my childhood best friend's name was Hilary Jellison and her dad's name was Brian," Dahlgren says.

While the two were "inseparable" in elementary school in New Jersey, Jellison had moved to Northern California in middle school and she and Dahlgren had lost touch. But the comment was enough to send Dahlgren to Google, where she learned that Jellison's dad Brian had died following his own cancer diagnosis in 2018. His family went on to create a private foundation in his name that focuses on higher education, financial literacy and helping others facing the challenges of cancer. Jellison, her mom and her two sisters serve as the foundation's directors.

"I hadn't spoken to her in over 40 years," Dahlgren says. "But I reached out and we decided to catch up and reconnect."

Their first Zoom call lasted for more than an hour — vacillating between the awkward, haven't-seen-one-another-in-40-years moments and more bittersweet recollections of youth.

"We just kept laughing," Jellison, 52, says. "We hadn't seen or talked to each other since we were like 12. So it was like, 'What is she going to look like?' or 'Will her voice sound the same?' There was a lot of life to catch up on."

Adds Dahlgren: "She told me about losing her dad to cancer, and her sister-in-law to breast cancer in 2023, and all of the amazing work that her family foundation is doing in helping cancer patients. And I shared some of what I was working on and sent her a link to the Today show story."

"At the end of that first phone call, we joked, 'Maybe together, we'll figure this out and go cure cancer together,' " Jellison says.

As the two began reconnecting more frequently, Jellison learned more about the cancer vaccine initiative, and for her longtime friend's hope to change cancer treatment forever.

"Dahlgren told me, 'I just need someone to be the first one to dive in the deep end with me,' and it was like, 'We'll do it. We'll dive in,' " Jellison says.

Eventually, during another Zoom call, Jellison gave Dahlgren the surprise of a lifetime: her family's foundation would be pledging $2 million to become the Cancer Vaccine Coalition’s first major donor.

The donation is meant as a matching opportunity to spur others to donate, as well. Jellison explains: "I hope our gift signals to other organizations that this is ground-breaking. We could really, potentially change treatment and help calm the fears of people worried about reoccurrence. I don't think we can get there fast enough."

The donation was striking to Dahlgren for myriad reasons — both for the difference it will make in cancer vaccine research as well as the difference it made in her own life.

"We've had this incredible, lasting friendship over our lifetimes and for me, it just proves that female friendships in particular are so strong and enduring," Dahlgren says.

"We've normalized this disease so much that there is this amazing treatment in development and we're not going after it with the full weight of everything we could," Dahlgren says. "As someone who went through treatment, I thought, 'We can do better.' And nobody's talking about it, nobody knows about it."

She continues: "More awareness, more funding, gathering the stakeholders together — that's something that really could move this forward in a meaningful way and and mean that we have breast cancer vaccines in five to ten years rather than decades."

Read the original article on People