Posted October 15, 2024

In 1992, a grassroots breast cancer campaign resulted in the first congressional appropriations to the Department of Defense for breast cancer research. Congress dedicated $210 million in FY93 and officially established the Breast Cancer Research Program, creating a unique partnership between the public, Congress and the military. In FY24, Congress appropriated $150 million to the BCRP. The program encourages the scientific community to design creative and innovative approaches to breast cancer research that will have the most clinical relevance and impact.

According to the National Cancer Institute, an estimated 310,720 females will receive new diagnoses of breast cancer in 2024, and about 42,250 females will die from breast cancer. The CDC says the overall five-year relative survival rate is about 91% for females with breast cancer, although survival varies by stage at diagnosis. Nearly 4 million females live with breast cancer in the United States, according to data from 2021.

INNOVATIVE BCRP-FUNDED RESEARCH RETHINKS SCREENING METHODS

Metastatic breast cancer is the most advanced stage of breast cancer, indicating spread of cancer from the breast to other parts of the body, such as the bones, lungs, liver and/or brain. Treating metastatic cancer controls the spread of cancer by stopping or slowing tumor growth. Sometimes patients can live long lives with controlled metastatic cancer, but there are no treatments once tumor growth is out of control.

In previous work supported by the BCRP, Saraswati Sukumar, Ph.D., developed a lab-based blood test, also called a liquid biopsy, able to predict disease progression in women with metastatic breast cancer. The test measured levels of a specific biomarker, called methylation, on the DNA of breast cancer-associated genes circulating in blood. Methylation of DNA is part of normal cellular processes, playing an important role in regulating the expression of genes and the organization of chromosomes. However, increased levels of methylated DNA signals advanced breast cancer. This test also reliably reflected a patient’s response to treatment.

With another BCRP-funded award in FY17, Sukumar and her team at Johns Hopkins University expanded their initial findings from the lab setting to clinical application, focusing on automating the liquid biopsy for rapid screening of blood samples.

In a prospective clinical study of 144 participants with metastatic disease, Sukumar and her team collected plasma and blood serum before patients started a new treatment regimen, four weeks after starting treatment, and then again between eight and 12 weeks. The test looks for nine genes associated with three of the major breast cancer subtypes and is sensitive enough to detect low amounts of methylated DNA. The team determined that higher levels of these markers early into treatment reflected a poor treatment response leading to disease progression.

The BCRP is supporting continued development of the automated liquid biopsy test with an FY22 award to validate test sensitivity and assess patient response to treatment at intervals during treatment. The ability to monitor tumor growth with a non-invasive method, like the liquid biopsy, could minimize a patient’s exposure to unnecessary toxic treatments with a reliable, quantitative, specific, and sensitive biomarker that identifies when to continue effective therapies or to discontinue ineffective ones in a timely manner.

MORE ABOUT THE BCRP

Through FY24, the BCRP received a total of $4.39 billion in congressional appropriations and funded 7,365 awards through FY23. These investments led to 19,416 scientific research papers, 1,383 patents, and 222 clinical trials.

The BCRP offers a variety of award mechanisms to foster new ideas, encourage established scientists in the field, attract new scientific expertise to breast cancer research, and promote multi-disciplinary collaborations. More information about the program, the strategic plan, and funded research can be found here.