I attended the Collaborative Summit on Breast Cancer Research in Washington D.C., held January 31- February 1. The goal of the Summit was to gather researchers, funders, advocates, and industry representatives together to assess the breast cancer research landscape and to develop collaborative projects for moving forward. Below are the remarks I gave during the opening plenary panel on the breast cancer research landscape and on NBCC’s current projects and priorities.
I am excited to be here and to have the chance to talk about the bigger picture of breast cancer research, where we have been and where we should be going. So much of the year is spent down in the weeds when it comes to breast cancer research, when we attend the ASCO meeting or SABCS, or when we review grant proposals, so it is gratifying to have this opportunity to for all of us to pull our heads up from the weeds and to discuss the long view.
And for me, the long view, means thinking about my 13-year-old daughter. Where do we need to be by the time she and her friends are adults? Are we on track? Will things be dramatically different in ten, twenty, thirty years when it comes to breast cancer? Or will mothers, grandmothers and young women and even men still be dying of breast cancer? Will we know by then why breast cancer cells can lay dormant for 15 years to reemerge and metastasize? Will we know how to eliminate those dormant cells from the beginning? And what about women who have aggressive disease from the get-go. Will we understand why it developed and more importantly know how to stop the progression for the long-term?
Unfortunately, I don’t see dramatic change on the horizon with current approaches. The ACS predicts that over 300,000 women will be diagnosed this year with in situ or invasive breast cancer. Dr. Gil Welch and others predict that between 30 to 50% of those could be considered overdiagnosis. We continue to add more women into the equation, putting them at risk of harm from treatments, and yet, are we seeing a difference in the measures that matter? Yes, we have seen steady, incremental declines in breast cancer mortality since the early 90s, but there has been no acceleration in this decline. And do we know what this really means? What IS working for women and what is not? Do we know how many women have died from the treatments? Do we know if death from breast cancer is being delayed rather than prevented? Are we really any closer to knowing how to prevent breast cancer or a breast cancer death for an individual woman?
What we do know is that the rate of diagnoses of Stage IV disease has remained constant for 30 years. What we do know is that 40,000 women and men will die from the disease again this year. What we do know is that the median survival for metastatic breast cancer has remained constant, at about three years.
With billions in resources and decades of effort, we see discovery of new targets, and development of new agents, that extend life by three to four months at a time, if we are lucky. We are learning a lot about the DNA of breast tumors, and the layers of complexity involved, but are we really gaining a better understanding of the why and how of breast cancer? The kind of understanding that will allow for development of gamechangers?
A pharma analysis report prepared a few years ago concluded that with what is currently in the pipeline, and based on historical trends, the median survival for metastatic breast cancer will inch forward from three years, to three years and six months by the year 2021. Important progress and critical efforts, yes, but is it good enough? No, it is not good enough. We can and must do better. We need new approaches to complement the old ones. We need new ways to look at the disease. We need to find approaches that give us hope of doing better. Targeting of mutations alone, in a disease that constantly grows and mutates, will never be enough.
In 2010, NBCC set a deadline. By the end of the decade we need to understand much more about metastasis and about development of primary breast cancer, so that we can prevent deaths and end this disease. The deadline is a tool to cause disruptive change. The purpose is to shift the focus, to look at the disease differently, to consider new approaches that give us hope of doing better.
How do we get there? To achieve success we have to do more than bring everyone together who works in the field, increase funding, and see what happens. We need to demand more focused research with the end results in mind. We need to bring new perspectives to the table. We need more translational research. And we need to measure what matters. It may just take having specific goals in mind, timelines, and yes, deadlines to get us there.
Many say to us, that’s not how science works. But, I know how science works. I did graduate work in nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University, I carried out a large thesis project involving lactating rats, looking at the impact of malnutrition on milk composition. I know that science works by asking questions, and figuring out how to test theories about the answers to those questions.
So what if we can all agree on what those questions should be? Questions that will help drive us to an understanding of how to prevent deaths from breast cancer? Science can work towards meeting goals and yes – even meeting deadlines. I know I had to answer my research questions in a certain time to finish my thesis and graduate. Scientists meet deadlines all the time. Right now, in the field of breast cancer research, we have many people asking many questions in an infinite number of directions. We are producing incredible volumes of information. But for all of that effort we are seeing minimal benefit for women. Something has to change. We need leadership and coordination of efforts, sharing of information, all of us working together on common goals. We need the will to ask the right questions, and the resources to explore those questions. And then we have to measure what matters to judge success.
NBCC has spent the last two years exploring how to do this on a small scale with what we call Artemis Projects. These are a series of collaborations among patient advocates and researchers from diverse perspectives. The purpose of the collaborations is to develop strategies, research plans and timelines for answering key breast cancer questions. Patient advocates are there to make sure efforts are always focused on the end result.
The first of our Artemis Projects was launched in 2011, bringing together a group of advocates and scientists to take a strategic, systematic yet broad approach to the development of a breast cancer preventive vaccine within five years. We bring together a group of close to 40 each year to assess progress and to readjust plans. We also hold smaller meetings to bring together experts to bear on particular issues as needed, and have an online community for the project to keep things moving in between meetings.
As most of you know, we don’t typically fund research directly. But through the generous support of National Philanthropic Trust (NPT), NBCC has awarded two seed grants as part of this project, one to Dr. Paul Spellman and Dr. Joe Gray of Oregon Health and Science University to identify possible vaccine targets using existing and developing human genomic data within different breast cancer subtypes.
And a second seed grant was awarded to Dr. Paul Ewald at the University of Louisville, and Dr. Vladimir Belyi of The Cancer Institute of NJ to look at infectious agents and breast cancer. Bioinformatic tools will be used to take a systematic approach to intersect the genomes of known viruses and a broad array of cellular pathogens to identify their presence and prevalence in breast cancer genomes relative to normal breast tissue. Initial data from both of these seed grants will be presented at the next annual meeting in March.
We will also be kicking off a second Artemis Project on Metastasis in June to focus on tumor dormancy. As with the Artemis Project on the Preventive Vaccine, our goal is to bring together investigators with diverse perspectives to brainstorm and develop innovative strategies for accelerating progress.
In summary, I think we do have the will and the resources to come together on asking the right questions. We have heard from others this morning about new initiatives focused on prevention and metastasis. I see positive steps being taken to prove that pharma analysis wrong. If we can keep the end result in mind, where we want to be when all of those 13 year olds are 21 year old adults and beyond, I feel hopeful we can change the course. I look forward to the rest of the meeting for further discussion on how we are going to get there. Thank-you.
Breast Cancer Advocate 