Dr. Steffi Oesterreich is a member of the organizing committee for the 2026 International Invasive Lobular Carcinoma Symposium, Dr. Adrian Lee will present on ILC models, and Dr. Oesterreich will have the honor to deliver the Leigh Pate lecture – 10 years after the first ILCS in Pittsburgh in 2016.
The “Lobular American Research Consortium” is an independent, investigator-led scientific consortium connecting scientists and clinicians across the Americas who share a commitment to ILC research. By uniting ILC-focused multi-disciplinary teams at academic medical centers, LARC will enable transformative, collaborative research initiatives that leverage collective resources and expertise of the nationwide ILC community, in addition to Rachel Jankowitz, MD — University of Pennsylvania, Matthew J. Sikora, PhD — University of Colorado Anschutz (co-chairs), and Suzanne Conzen, MD — University of Texas Southwestern, Julia Foldi, MD PhD — University of Pittsburgh, Rita Mukhtar, MD — University of California San Francisco, Steffi Oesterreich, PhD — University of Pittsburgh, Sherry Shen, MD — Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Jennifer Zhang, MD — University of Pennsylvania. DYNAMI and long-term collaborator and patient advocate Flora Migyanka are supporting the launch of LARC.
In collaboration with Champions Oncology, we have identified and validated seven patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models of ILC from a pool of 122 breast cancer models, confirming key ILC features such as truncating CDH1 mutations and luminal subtypes, with common genetic alterations in PIK3CA, CDH1, and TP53, providing valuable tools for studying ILC biology and developing targeted treatments.
Drs. Oesterreich and Kok (NKI) moderated an ILC session with exciting presentations by Drs. Vincent-Salomon, Metzger, Sotiriou, and Aftimos, as well as critical contributions from patient advocate Flora Migyanka. More details here: https://www.sabcsmeetingnews.org/special-session-amplifies-dialogue-on-lobular-breast-cancer/
Also, our team was proud to receive four LBCA Research Abstract Merit Awards for our ILC Posters presented at 2025 SABCS (Abdalla Wedn, Hannah Maynard, and Drs. Julia Foldi and Steffi Oesterreich).
On behalf of a large collaborative group of TBCRC investigators, as well as additional scientists working on the correlative studies, Dr. Oesterreich presented the ILC window trial (TBCRC037) at ESMO in Berlin. And we were happy that it won a BEST POSTER prize!
The ILC Think Tank, attended by 46 participants including 12 BCRF-funded investigators and held adjacent to the NYC BCRF meeting in October 2025, was considered highly successful, with its discussion-focused format fostering transparent and constructive dialogue on a number of critical topics including potential clinical trial targets and pathways. Three key proposals emerged from the meeting: forming a US-based ILC research working group, establishing an international ILC Association to strengthen collaboration with pharmaceutical partners, and identifying one or two urgent but achievable unmet needs that all attendees, or smaller subgroups, could address as a collaborative initiative.
In older women (≥70) with early-stage ER+ invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC), omitting sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) was not associated with increased recurrence or worse locoregional recurrence-free survival compared to those who underwent SLNB, even though ILC patients presented with larger, higher-stage tumors. These findings support extending the Choosing Wisely recommendation to omit SLNB to patients with ILC, though larger studies and ongoing trials (SOUND, INSEMA) are needed to validate this conclusion.
Dr George Tseng, Professor in Biostatistics a UPitt, is a critical component of the Pittsburgh ILC Program of Excellence. His studies for testing congruence of ILC models with ILC clinical samples are critical for ILC research. For example, CASCAM (Congruence Analysis and Selection of Cancer Models) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38198519/, helps to identify cell lines most representative for ILC research. He subsequently obtained an R01 grant (MPI with Dr. Adrian Lee) on “Single-cell congruence evaluation and selection of cancer models towards precision medicine”.
We held our first Celebration of Life event for families of patients enrolled in the Hope for OTHERS program, a rapid autopsy initiative designed to advance our understanding of treatment resistance and metastatic disease (described in https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40537829/). The success of the Hope for OTHERS program depends on key team members including Lori Miller, our clinical coordinator; Alex Chang, an MSTP student serving as our research coordinator; and dedicated patient advocates Christine Desmedt, Stephanie Walker, and Lori Livingston. Through the Hope for OTHERS program, we are collaborating with the UPTIDER program at KU Leuven, led by Dr. Christine Desmedt, to improve our understanding of metastatic ILC. A first combined manuscript is under review (Zels et al: Clinical and histopathological characterization of metastatic lobular breast cancer: lessons learned from post-mortem tissue donation programs).