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Durham, N.C. – Thousands of participants have their running shoes ready for the Susan G. Komen Run for Healing, organized annually by Triangle. Fundraising to fight breast cancer begins Saturday.
Their efforts have made great strides in the prevention and treatment of breast cancer in recent decades. Many of these advances have been made through Komen-funded research in the Triangle's two major medical and research institutions: Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Lisa Carey, Cancer Researcher at Duke, and Donald McDonnell, Ph.D., of the UNBC Cancer Research Center Lineberger Comprehensive Center, are now Leaders in the Susan G. Komen Foundation Triangle .
Carey said joining the Scientific Advisory Board would "help guide future research efforts."
McDonnell is now part of the Triangle Komen Board of Directors.
"I would like to believe that it is one of the country's strongest affiliations," McDonnell said.
McDonnell said his lab team was at the forefront of drug development for all stages of breast cancer in patients diagnosed as estrogen-positive, who can be treated with hormone-treatment medications.
"We have a particular interest in trying to develop drugs for late-stage cancer, so it's for people who have failed all conventional treatments," he said.
McDonnell said his team was building on the historic success of tamoxifen in early-stage patients.
Breast cancer with positive estrogen accounts for the majority of cases, and McDonnell said tamoxifen was very effective in these women.
"There is a good chance you will be treated and never heard of it again," he said.
A recent study of his work at Duke, funded by the Komen Foundation, focuses on why the immune system fails and allows tumors to grow.
"Could we find a way to remove that coat, if you wish, that the immune system sees around a tumor that it can not pierce?" McDonnell said. "We have had some very important successes in this country."
Komen has funded the Carolina Breast Cancer Study since the early 1990s. Carey has played an important role in collecting, organizing and analyzing the data.
"It's paying off," said Carey. "We now have a better idea of the differences between the biological type of breast cancer among women of African descent and white-born women and older women."
"They really differ in a clinically significant way," she said.
Carey has also worked to reach underserved populations, primarily in rural areas of the state. She found increased access to screening mammography and advances in how clinicians can intervene and improve outcomes.
"We can talk about any new treatment with everything we want, but if patients do not get the drugs, it will not matter," Carey said.
Carey said that one of the benefits of philanthropic funding through the Komen Foundation is that it increases the ability of research centers from different parts of the country to collaborate, thus improving their efforts.
That's what she sees as part of her goal within Komen.
"As a member of the board of directors, I look forward to helping design the next generation of research initiatives," she said.
Carey also wants to avoid a comprehensive approach of administering treatments to patients, especially those with metastatic disease.
"We really need to contribute to two essential things: finding a way to minimize the 20% of patients who are still dying from breast cancer and to minimize the number of difficult and toxic treatments we give to patients who do not have one." need. that, she said.
Carey and McDonnell both say that this type of advance is all the more likely when UNC and Duke are in the game.
"It's a very unusual place," Carey said. "I do not come from North Carolina, but come here and have two major academic centers within 8 miles of one another, of two complete cancer centers, two places where breast cancer is a priority, is a considerable advantage. "
McConnell added, "The region is a hotbed of research. Between our colleagues from the UNC and here, I think we cover all aspects of the disease. "
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