BCRF’s Symposium and Awards Luncheon celebrates our more than 260 distinguished investigators for their dedication and accomplishments and brings hundreds of supporters together to raise critical funds for our mission—dollars that are helping fund the next breakthroughs. This year’s event will be held on at 10 a.m. on Friday, October 25 in New York City.
The event’s symposium, “Preventing Breast Cancer: Progress in Treatments Leads the Way,” will feature some of the brightest minds in science. The panel includes BCRF investigators Drs. Abenaa Brewster, Lisa Carey, and Robert Vonderheide and will be co-moderated by BCRF Founding Scientific Director Dr. Larry Norton and BCRF Scientific Director Dr. Judy Garber. Dr. Garber will receive the Foundation’s Jill Rose Award for Scientific Excellence and The Pink Agenda will receive the Sandra Taub Humanitarian Award at this year’s luncheon.
Read on to meet this year’s panelists.
Dr. Brewster is a tenured professor in the Department of Clinical Cancer Prevention at MD Anderson Cancer Center and has an adjunct appointment in the Department of Epidemiology. She is a medical oncologist and director of the MD Anderson Nellie B. Connally Breast Center. Dr. Brewster’s research team has developed a framework for investigating the decisions women consider when deciding to undergo a prophylactic mastectomy. Her research expertise involves using molecular epidemiology to investigate clinical, epidemiological, and biological factors that determine breast cancer risk and survival. She is particularly interested in understanding how tumor genomics, host genetic susceptibility, ethnicity, and obesity influence a woman’s breast cancer risk and survival. She has deep experience conducting and data-managing population-based cohort studies and is the principal investigator and director of a longitudinal cohort study of women at high risk of breast cancer.
About her BCRF-funded research: To improve the precision of breast cancer screening and detect breast cancer early, Dr. Brewster and her team are working to develop a new blood-based cancer detection test, also known as a liquid biopsy. Ideally, this test would allow for more personalized screening, where someone with a positive blood test can be offered more frequent screening—including breast MRI—while someone with a negative blood test would be safely advised to have less frequent screening mammograms or no screening at all. Further, her team is evaluating patients’ perceptions and preferences for this new method of breast cancer detection to evaluate for potential barriers.
Dr. Carey is the L. Richardson and Marilyn Jacobs Preyer Distinguished Professor in Breast Cancer Research and Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center Deputy Director of Clinical Sciences at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Dr. Carey has a longstanding interest how breast cancer subtypes and the tumor microenvironment influence how patients respond to therapies and thus, their outcomes. She designs and leads clinical trials of novel drugs and approaches and is a close collaborator with several laboratory investigators and epidemiologists.
About her BCRF-supported research: Dr. Carey’s BCRF-supported research centers on understanding the biology and behavior of metastatic breast cancer (MBC), which is considered incurable. Most of what researchers know about breast cancer biology is based on studying the primary cancer (the cancer at the location where it originates and begins to grow). Less is known, however, about the biology of the breast cancer once it has spread from to other organs. Determining the biology at different metastasis sites and how different organs affect cancer behavior informs how researchers make decisions on individualized therapy and treatment. Dr. Carey and her team are comparing samples from the original breast tumors with metastases in the same patient, subjecting them to cellular and genetic analyses to reveal their differences. They have found that a subset of metastatic tumors don’t match the primary tumor characteristics. Whether and how these changes affect treatment and response is the focus of her team’s efforts.
Dr. Vonderheide is the director of the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania and the John H. Glick, MD, Abramson Cancer Center’s Director Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine. He also serves as vice dean for cancer programs at the Perelman School of Medicine and vice president of cancer programs for the University of Pennsylvania Health System. He is well-recognized for driving the development of agonist CD40 antibodies, now in later-stage clinical trials, as a potential immune therapy for cancer. An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, Dr. Vonderheide has been continuously funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and serves on nine scientific boards for other cancer centers and the NCI Board of Scientific Advisers.
About his BCRF-supported research: Activating the immune system to fight cancer is one of the most promising approaches for treating patients with cancer. Initial immunotherapy drugs have produced exciting results—including for patients with breast cancer—but not every patient responds. Dr. Vonderheide and his team are leveraging our increasing knowledge of the immune system and gene therapy to develop new approaches to prevent de novo breast cancer and recurrence in individuals at high risk, including those with mutations in BRCA1/2.
Dr. Garber is the chief of the Division of Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an attending physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.In addition to serving as BCRF’s Scientific Director and a BCRF investigator, Dr. Garber is a foremost expert in clinical cancer genetics, and she has played a major role in developing national guidelines. Her interests focus on breast cancer genetics, risk reduction, and developing treatments for individuals carrying breast cancer–associated mutations. Her research includes the study of basal-like breast cancer, which is common in women with BRCA1 mutations. Her first neo-adjuvant trial of cisplatin in patients based on the role of BRCA1 in DNA repair demonstrated a significant complete response rate that has led to a series of trials, including a randomized phase 2 international, multicenter trial.
About her BCRF research: Little is known about the biology of BRCA1 or BRCA2-driven breast cancers that are estrogen receptor (ER)–positive, which may be associated with less-favorable biology and a higher risk of recurrence. Dr. Garber is working to understand the biology of BRCA-associated, ER-positive breast cancers more deeply to ultimately improve treatment for these patients. Her team has assembled tumor samples from a cohort of patients with BRCA1-associated, ER-positive breast cancer and another with BRCA2-associated, ER-positive breast cancer. In the coming year, they will initiate detailed molecular profiling and analysis of these samples. They will also include an exploratory cohort of ER-positive tumors that are also deficient in PALB2, another breast cancer susceptibility gene.
Dr. Norton has dedicated his life to the eradication of cancer, and in 1993, he founded BCRF with the late Evelyn H. Lauder. At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dr. Norton serves as the senior vice president in the Office of the President, the medical director of the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center, and the Norna S. Sarofim Chair in Clinical Oncology. In addition to serving as BCRF’s Founding Scientific Director, Dr. Norton—whose research scope is vast—collaborates with BCRF researchers on several projects. He has been involved developing several effective therapies, including paclitaxel and trastuzumab, and he co-invented the Norton-Simon Model of cancer growth, which has broadly influenced cancer therapy, and, more recently, the self-seeding concept of cancer metastasis and growth. Over his illustrious career, Dr. Norton has received many honors, including, most recently, being elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
About his BCRF-supported research: Dr. Norton is involved in collaborations with BCRF investigators on projects aimed at improving breast cancer treatments and advancing our understanding of MBC. Most notable of these collaborations is the Mathematical Oncology Initiative, underwritten through generous support from the Simons Foundation. The Mathematical Oncology Initiative brings together mathematicians, biologists, oncologists, and other scientists to develop new tools to interpret, model, and understand scientific data.
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