Canadian friends Penny Overes, Catherine Spencer and
Danielle Smith were among the 200+ attendees. Alberta represent!
MBCN’s 6th Annual National Conference (“Moving Forward With Metastatic Breast Cancer,”) took place Oct. 13, 2012 at Northwestern’s Lurie Cancer Center in Chicago. In a few weeks, videos and presentation handouts will be posted at MBCN.org. In the interim, here are some highlights from selected breakout sessions, from attendee Pam Breakey. Pam is a long-time participant on the BC.Mets.org site and, as you will see, takes wonderful notes.
Part One: General Sessions
Part Two: Selected Breakout Sessions
We were honored to have Medical Lessons blogger and Atlantic correspondent Elaine Schattner join us. Dr. Schattner is a trained oncologist, hematologist, medical educator and journalist who writes and speaks on medicine. Her views on health care are informed by her experiences as a patient with scoliosis since childhood and other conditions including breast cancer. Her work has appeared in Slate, the New York Times, Scientific American, Cure Magazine and the New York Observer. Read her great article for the Atlantic here.
MBCN Honors Dr. Pat Steeg’s Dedication to Metastatic Research With the Ellen Moskowitz and Suzanne Hebert Leadership Grant Award
MBCN board member Shirley Mertz presented the award to Dr. Pat Steeg.
In other conference news, MBCN presented Dr. Patricia Steeg with the Ellen Moskowitz and Suzanne Hebert Leadership Grant Award. “For the last 20 years, in her laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, in Bethesda, Maryland, Dr. Patricia Steeg has been researching how cancer cells from the primary tumor in the breast travel to vital organs, in particular the brain,” said Shirley Mertz, MBCN board member and prominent patient advocate. “Dr. Steeg identified the first cancer suppressor gene and has done pioneering work on brain metastasis. Although metastatic research is difficult and involves long and complex experiments, Dr. Steeg remains undeterred. She exerts strong leadership in the research community nationally and internationally.”
Prior to accepting the award, Steeg gave a presentation on “Research on Treatment to Contain Metastatic Growth.” The researcher made a case for redesigning clinical trials to do what she termed “phase II randomized metastasis-prevention trials.” Currently, phase I and phase II clinical trials are done in patients with advanced, refractory metastatic cancer, patients who have had many therapies. In phase II trials,
researchers typically are trying to determine if a drug shrinks metastases.
“But a drug that prevents metastasis may not shrink a large, refractory tumor,” said Steeg. “It has a different mechanism of action that is not picked up by the clinical trial system.” Steeg referenced a
perspective piece, “The Right Trials,” she wrote for Nature this past May.
“The proposal I’ve put forth should apply to a number of different cancers, particularly those where the majority of patients are diagnosed before they have full-blown metastatic disease, or if they have limited, treatable metastatic disease,” Steeg told NCI Cancer Bulletin this past June. “One could imagine applying this to prostate, bladder, and colon cancers.”
Don’t Miss These Awesome Photos:
But wait! There’s more! Awesome conference photographs, courtesy of Ellen Averick Schor are Here.
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