On April 30, 2004 the George Washington University and the IBC Research Foundation co-sponsored an “IBC Mini Symposium” hosted by George Washington University.
There were more than 75 attendees and four speakers, each followed by an active question and answer period.
The four speakers and their Power Point presentations were:
- Dr. Paul Levine, George Washington University, Problems in the Surveillance of Inflammatory Breast Cancer.
- Dr. William Anderson, National Cancer Institute, Population Based Incidence and Prognostic Factor Patterns for Inflammatory Breast Cancer.
- Dr. Sandra Swain, National Cancer Institute, Inflammatory Breast Cancer Biology and Treatment.
- Dr. Laszlo Boros, Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, or LA BioMed, Metabolic Profile of Inflammatory Breast Cancer: Aiding Diagnosis and Treatment. Additional experiments have failed to confirm the results of the original study presented in 2004; that Power Point presentation is not presented here. For more on Stable isotope based dynamic metabolic profiling, see www.sidmap.com.
As a little background to the presentations, what follows is an update on what the IBC Research Foundation has been working on these past few years, since much of it ties into what you’ll see in the slide presentations.
- Dr. Paul Levine, of George Washington University, includes information on the IBC REGISTRY in his presentation. The IBC Research Foundation began working with Dr. Levine in 1999 on what later became the IBC REGISTRY, funded by DoD Breast Cancer Research Program. We volunteered countless hours as well as dollars to this important project.
- Dr. William Anderson “got the ibc bug” when he first spoke with Owen Johnson about the unusual statistics he was finding in the SEER data. We have continued to work with Dr. Anderson to encourage his “out of the box” thinking. As you can see in his presentation, he is learning important statistical data on the incidence, age at diagnosis, ER/PR status, etc. of ibc.
- Dr. Sandra Swain of the National Cancer Institute presents a broad view of the treatment of ibc, including data from her work with the clinical trial for newly diagnosed ibc patients using the trial drug Avastin. Again, the IBC Research Foundation was involved in the initial design of this trial and did all we could to assure that newly diagnosed patients were aware of the trial, providing information and support services. By working closely with Dr. Swain and her team, we were able to help accrue nearly all the patients who entered the trial. The use of dynamic MRI in this study is already catching the attention of others in the field of breast cancer. It was exciting to hear Dr. Swain talk about the importance of the information gained from this trial and we look forward to the final report in print and continued collaboration with this team.
- Dr. Laszlo Boros, of Harbor UCLA, has been working with some novel ideas regarding glucose metabolism. The IBC Research Foundation provided funding to Dr. Boros to proceed with his work on the glucose metabolism of ibc cells, which has led to important and significant findings.
The IBC Research Foundation supports such educational presentation to advance the understanding of the biology of ibc. Our focus remains on results that will lead to earlier and definitive diagnosis and to treatments that result in superior outcomes.
Thank you for your continued support of the mission and goals of the IBC Research Foundation.
