Leigh Pate passes, which is not only an unsurmountable loss for the ILC patient advocacy community, but for ILC research. Her contributions to lobular breast cancer have affected the lives of thousands of patients and their families, and this number will only continue to grow. She left a donation to BCRF which started a project aimed at generation of ILC patient-derived organoids (PDOs). This is a collaboration between UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Institute for Precision Medicine, which Dr. Adrian Lee directs. Dr. Lee has made the generation of patient-derived breast cancer organoids, spearheaded by Dr. Daniel Brown, a priority of IPM. Dr. Jagmohan Hooda in the Lee/Oesterreich lab leads the characterization of ILC PDOs and the collaboration effort with MSKCC.
Dr. Steffi Oesterreich and Dr. Adrian Lee receive funding from the NCI Oncology Models Forum to increase quality and quantity of ILC models: “Credentialing Models of Invasive Lobular Breast Cancer for Translational Research”– lack thereof was a critical hurdle for progress in ILC research.
San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2018 has its first ILC-focused session, in which Dr. Oesterreich spoke about progress made understanding unique ILC biology.
Dr. Steffi Oesterreich and Leigh Pate became good friends (and Leigh became a fierce yet humble ILC patient advocate). They had many phone calls and some in-person meetings discussing how to drive ILC research forward. Other patients who had joined the 1st ILC Symposium in 2016 in Pittsburgh joined in (such as Lori Pettiti) – and the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance (LBCA) was born. Dr. Steffi Oesterreich served as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board until 2022.
An unbiased screen performed in Dr. Adrian Lee’s lab, identified E-cadherin as a top candidate interacting with the IGF1 pathway. Dr. Lee joined the ILC research efforts, which propelled ILC genomic studies in the now combined Lee-Oesterreich lab.
After many discussions and guidance from Dr. Davidson, we opened the first clinical trial specifically in ILC: a biomarker window trial aimed at improving understanding of endocrine therapy in patients with ILC. It was performed with the help of the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC). Drs. Rachel Jankowitz and Priscilla McAuliffe are clinical PIs. Dr. Jankowitz received a Career Development Award from Susan G. Komen supporting the study.
Here is the press release: https://www.upmc.com/media/news/100615-invasive-lobular-breast-cancer
After some unsuccessful attempts to obtain NIH funding, Dr. Oesterreich received BCRF funding for her ILC research. This allowed the journey to start. We increased research on ILC, with the support of some exceptional students, postdocs and Dr. Nancy Davidson, at the time Dr. Oesterreich’s main mentor. Of note BCRF also provided funds for subsequent ILC Symposia, and started to include ILC into Breakout sessions at the Annual BCRF Symposium.
When moving from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, to UPCI/Magee Womens Research Institute, Dr. Oesterreich had just become interested in ILC, as some estrogen receptor cofactors were expressed higher in ER+ ILC (as per Oncomine). She decided to start researching ILC, and was delighted to learn that Dr. David Dabbs, the Chief Pathologist at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital was an internationally recognized expert in ILC. The ILC studies would not have been possible without Dr. Dabbs advice and countless slide reviews. Dr. Oesterreich and Dr. Dabbs had many productive collaborations, and also co-authored a review in “Breast Pathology, 2nd Edition by David J. Dabbs”.
Dr. Oesterreich gives a Keynote Lecture at the ILC Course in Boston in 2018, which starts the official continuation of the ILC Symposia. Drs. Otto Metzger and Rachel Jankowitz worked with some amazing advocates, including Julia Levine, Janice Axelroad, Lori Pettiti and Flora Migyanka (who later founded Dynami)
In this study, we performed a combined analysis of four NSABP trials with more than 12,000 patients treated with anthracycline-based adjuvant chemotherapy, and with at least 10 years of follow-up. While there was no significant difference in disease free survival and overall survival over the entire follow-up period, stratification by years since diagnosis showed that patients with ILC exhibited increased risk for late DFS events, recurrences, and deaths. We are currently expanding our correlative studies using the primary tumor specimens from this unique, large, annotated cohort of patients with ILC and matched NST with long-term follow up.