Once again, I was thrilled and honored to be invited back by Komen National to participate along with 6 other breast cancer bloggers at Komen's Blogger Summit 2015, Experience The Mission: Expanding Care and Advancing the Science on May 8, 2015. I recognized and was happy to see some former bloggers from last year, Rene Syler, Nicole McLean, Renee Ross and Debbie Woodbury. New to the Summit this year were bloggers, Tami Boehmer and Jill Cohen, both living with metastatic breast cancer. The Summit consisted of listening to and interacting with Komen representatives, a Komen Scholar, a Research Grantee and Komen Advocates speaking on Komen's Mission. As I attended the 2nd annual Komen Blogger Summit in Washington DC, I learned that Komen is
focusing in on how they're making a difference and how are they helping
in 3 key areas:
- Metastatic Breast Cancer
- Training young investigators for the next generation of breast cancer researchers
- Breast health disparities in uninsured women
With only 15% of Komen's $50M devoted to research in 2013 went towards Metastatic
Breast Cancer, some women living with metastatic disease says
that's not enough. Komen is listening to these women as metastatic
breast cancer dominated the conversation among the bloggers at the Summit.
1 in 5 patients diagnosed with breast cancer are living with metastatic disease. Treatment can relieve symptoms, extend and improve quality of life for many years, but most patients with metastatic breast cancer cannot be cured. Komen is
looking into expanding care for women living with metastatic breast
cancer... What do they need and what do they need now to live life to
the fullest for however long their life may be?
 |
ANTONIO WOLFF, M.D.
KOMEN SCHOLAR |
Dr.
Antonio Wolf stressed that accuracy is huge in treatment. His research
involves giving the least amount of chemo to avoid issues with
over-toxicity, false positives and genomics. Difficulties arises when
you biopsy from different metastatic sites and resulting in different
genomics make-up. More research needs to be done to understand the biology of metastatic breast cancer. Wolf
stated they need the tools to further research in metastatic breast
cancer, they just didn't have the basic science back then. Another
challenge breast cancer researchers face is that only 3% of patients
participate in clinical research.
 |
| Dr. Wolf, Dr. Raffey and Dr. Stover |
Komen's
funding for the best research and brightest researchers are determined
by a team of Scientific Advisory Board, Komen Scholars and Advocates in
Science as they look at the merit of a research project. Will it be
successful and lead to a clinical trial? The process starts with a
strategic direction of Komen's scientific focus; then it is reviewed by
it peers followed by Science Advocates ensuring that Komen's funding
research that has the greatest patient impact. Komen advocates makes sure
patient's voice is heard in Science.
 |
DANIEL G. STOVER, M.D.
KOMEN POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP
GRANTEE |
Young
investigator, Dr. Daniel Stover who's focus in on drug/chemotherapy resistance in Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC), presented his research on TNBC and why do patients respond differently to chemo?... Triple Negative Breast Cancer is not a "single disease." Dr. Stover will be researching the cancer's DNA Barcode to determine
what chemo will work on TNBC patients. I took advantage of the
opportunity to pull Dr. Stover aside after the conference to speak to
him about the future of a targeted therapy for TNBC patients. Dr.
Stover agreed that with having several subtypes of triple negative
breast cancer that there won't just be one singular targeted therapy,
but several target therapies is needed to be discovered. Stover said that
researchers are getting closer to finding a targeted therapy for TNBC,
which gives me great hope that this day will come.
Komen's
research programs continue to focus on young investigators for the
future with funding of more than $134M in over 685 grants to help with
their training and career development in their research.
Disparities in health care continues to be a huge concern today, and Komen is committed to help eliminate inequities through their community outreach programs to increase access to quality breast health care and screening for African-American and Hispanic uninsured women. Komen is currently funding multi-year grants in Washington DC and Chicago Metro to combat breast health disparities.
5% of black women die everyday of advanced breast cancer. I remember Dr. Judith Salerno saying more than once that this is just unacceptable! The elimination of inequities in prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment and survivorship for all women is being addressed by Komen and their partner organizations.
Komen's
impact in the community is determined by targeting the area of highest
needs and supporting community partners to address those needs. In 2013,
Komen had devoted $76M in grants to more than 1300 community partner
agencies to fund education, diagnostics services, treatment and
survivorship programs to those in greatest need.
 |
| NORM BOWLING |
Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer, Norm Bowling spoke of the importance of partnerships with big corporations... It
is a great way of extending their mission message to their followers, reaching larger audiences. In addition, these big corporation partners help fund-raise for Komen. Bowling leads the Komen 3-Day race series raising more than $850 million since 2004.
At
last years conference, Komen marketing team and bloggers discussed
Komen's website and social media. Suggestions were made to Komen in
efforts of reaching a wider audience and what information a person may
be looking for when they go to the Komen Website. Komen is committed to
building relationships with people they serve. Since then, Komen had
expanded their social media. In addition to Facebook and Twitter, they have
added Pinterest and Instagram to their Website. Komen has revamped
their website to make it easier to navigate and have topics geared
towards what part of their journey they are in now and issues they are
facing as they're going through their journey. Komen has been adding
personal stories of breast cancer survivors to inspire others to have
hope and see the faces of others surviving and/or living with breast
cancer. Komen has received a lot of positive feedback and more traffic
to their website since they updated and improved it. People need to hear what Komen's focuses are and changes they're making was suggested by one blogger. Also suggested, some bloggers agreed that Komen should get rid of the word, "awareness" in their campaign, proclaiming that we are all aware... and use terms, education and information instead. Check out the new look of Komen's website that is an excellent resource that helps navigate you through every step of your journey, and addresses survivorship concerns too.
Click to link: http://ww5.komen.org
- Komen continues to be one of the top funders in Breast Cancer Research outside of Government Funding. - $50 Million, 2013
- Komen's
commitment to research has resulted in $847 million to date as of
3/31/14, funding more than 2400 research projects and over 450 clinical
trials in total. These investments covers research in treatments,
biology, early detection and prognosis, causes of breast cancer, model
systems, prevention/risk prediction and survivorship.
- Komen has reached across the globe with investing more than $30M internationally in more than 50 countries.
Komen's research has been primarily focusing on prevention, early detection and metastasis of breast cancer.
- Komen's investment in breast cancer prevention research exceeds $48M in over 85 grants and 15 clinical trials.
Prevention
research is looking at the immune system and lifestyle risk factors,
preventative drugs and vaccines, identifying biomarkers to determine who
is at high risk of developing breast cancer and dietary approaches.
- In
early detection research, Komen has spent more than $33M in over 115
grants to improve breast cancer screenings and technology and
development of strategies to increase the number of women to get
mammograms.
Their research in the development of ultrasound tomography
that uses sound waves to create 3D breast images looks to be more
promising than mammograms in detecting breast cancer in women with dense
breasts.
- Komen
has invested more than $98M since 2006 in over 200 grants focusing on
metastatic breast cancer research.
Research is looking to identify
genes that causes breast cancer cells to metastasis, develop new
treatments to prevent and treat metastasis, and discovering new methods
to predict and detect metastasis.
Having a fun time with my pink sister, Jyll at Toledo's Dana Cancer Center on June 25, 2015. Thank you UTMC for honoring us survivors!
While I was attending the Komen Blogger Summit in DC, I was also invited as a VIP guest of Komen, where we had a continental breakfast while WWE's, Hulk Hogan, Komen's Founder, Nancy Brinker and Komen's CEO and President, Dr. Judith Salerno spoke to us survivors and supporters of Komen's Mission. British Singer and Songwriter, Matt Goss took stage and really got the crowd pumped up with his hit song, "Strong" that has now become the "Survivor Anthem" for Komen for the Cure. Matt Goss amazed me when he belted out his powerful lyrics of "Strong" that was written and dedicate to his Mum while she was going through chemotherapy for her breast cancer, who unfortunately had since passed. Matt Goss has partnered with Susan G. Komen to help raise funds for their organization with donations for downloading his song, "Strong." Here is a link to a video I recorded from my camera of Matt Goss' amazing performance at DC's Race for the Cure : https://youtu.be/_d1yPJSeMSk 
