Breast Cancer Deserves More Than A Month
As a scientist who has studied cell-cycle and cancer biology for more than 25 years, I am thankful there’s a month designated for breast cancer awareness. It is also encouraging that each year we see the familiar shade of pink spreading into new corners of society, and more segments of sports, entertainment and pop-culture.?
These efforts and the awareness they help create for the cause are a signal of the progress we’ve made, from a time where cancer—and breast cancer in particular—were spoken about in whispers—to now where there is an annual moment that creates global focus on this issue. However, the reality is that breast cancer is more than an occasional intruder into our world, it? affects 1 in 8 women and results in 43,000 deaths in the U.S., annually. While not always verbalized, breast cancer is something that women are thinking about all the time. Will I get it? Will someone I know be diagnosed? I need to schedule my appointment. Why haven't they called yet with my results?? For the sake of our mothers, sisters, daughters, friends, and ourselves, let’s not limit the discussion or our actions to defeat breast cancer to certain time periods. Let’s “normalize” breast cancer as something we confront loudly, aggressively, continuously, 12 months a year.
There have been significant advances over several decades as a result of breakthroughs in precision oncology. Science is working! And I am in awe of this. Transformative therapies such as the CDK4 inhibitors have done a great job of extending the remission window. However, the 5-year survival rate for metastatic breast cancer still remains under 30%, and the goal we value most, lifetime survival, is simply too low for society to accept.
One of the biggest roadblocks for breast cancer patients is the problem of drug resistance. Overcoming this pervasive factor calls for a paradigm shift. One that’s willing to reopen the focus on targets that were previously deemed untargetable—and undruggable—in order to prevent drug resistant phenotypes. That’s where we’ve focused our efforts at Concarlo Therapeutics.
In recent years, precision oncology has gotten pretty good at drugging a type of enzyme called kinases and creating antibodies that target cell surface receptors to halt the proliferation of cancer cells. Now we must add to our repertoire by finding ways to clean up what precision oncology leaves behind.
There’s wide agreement that a protein known as p27Kip (p27) is a key regulator that plays an important role within the drug resistance pathway. For some time now, medical science has suggested that if we can find a way to drug the p27, it would be a transformational advance in the fight against breast cancer. At Concarlo, we are a preclinical oncology that focuses on targeting p27 as nature’s master regulator. Our approach avoids resistance by mimicking the way nature controls the p27 target. In a normal cell the p27 target acts as the gatekeeper of proliferation or non-proliferation. Our work focuses on controlling the proliferation of cancer cells using the p27 target in this very same way. We see this as a clear path forward in the fight against drug resistance.
The point is, science is showing us, in no uncertain terms, that there’s more that we can do. More that we must do to save lives. We’re all prone to borrowing from military jargon when we speak of fighting cancer and battling breast cancer. But to follow through on the metaphor, wars aren’t won by focusing on the objective one month out of the year. So, let’s not allow Breast Cancer Awareness Month to devolve into an annual virtue signaling opportunity on social media. Let’s be ferociously vocal in spreading the word, but let’s remember to put our words into action not just in October, but every month of every year.
We know that of the 600,000 cancer deaths suffered each year in the U.S. a third are attributable to environmental causes that are somewhat controllable by our personal actions and choices. So, pay attention to science, take care of yourself, and do your part. Urge Congress to fund research. Donate to cancer charities. And Invest in innovative cancer companies.? These are things we can and should be doing not just in October, but all year.
The science is there and the opportunity is all of ours. Let’s create a world of possibility, hope, and time, by making cancer a treatable, manageable, and survivable condition.
About the Author: Dr. Stacy Blain is an internationally known expert in cell cycle and cancer biology, and is one of the world’s experts on p27Kip1. She has been studying cell cycle regulation for more than 25 years as an NIH funded investigator and tenured Associate Professor at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center. She founded Concarlo Therapeutics , capitalizing on discoveries she made and patented. She was trained at Princeton, Columbia and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.