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Here’s an easy way to get Christmas gifts organised well in advance and to help BCAC at the same time. By clicking here you can buy gift certificates for those friends and family who already have everything they need, but would get a great feeling knowing they are helping women with breast cancer. The Good Registry is a great volunteer organisation set up by some Wellington women who are passionate about doing good. They issue gift certificates which can be redeemed by donating to one of their charity partners – like BCAC! By donating to BCAC this Christmas, your friends and family can help us to keep supporting, informing and representing kiwi women with breast cancer.
NZ breast cancer specialists, assisted by the Breast Cancer Foundation NZ, have just published a new set of consensus guidelines for treating advanced breast cancer (ABC-NZ2). Patient representatives from Metavivors NZ, Sweet Louise and BCAC also contributed to the guidelines.
Oncologist Dr Marion Kuper, who chaired the team producing the guidelines, says “We’ve created these guidelines to be a framework for everyone involved in the treatment of ABC, including clinicians, patients and government health organisations. They provide an evidence-based summary of what NZ clinicians consider best practice to manage ABC, a complex disease requiring specialist care, if we are to help our patients live as long as possible with the best possible quality of life.”
Christmas is coming! But don’t panic – BCAC’s partnership with The Good Registry can make gift-giving easy this year. By clicking here you can buy gift certificates for those friends and family who already have everything they need, but would get a great feeling knowing they are helping women with breast cancer. The Good Registry is a great volunteer organisation set up by some Wellington women who are passionate about doing good. They issue gift certificates which can be redeemed by donating to one of their charity partners – like BCAC! By donating to BCAC this Christmas, your friends and family can help us to keep supporting, informing and representing kiwi women with breast cancer.
BCAC Committee members Fay Sowerby, Libby Burgess and Emma Crowley attended the Breast Cancer inSIGhts conference on 1-3 September 2022 in Auckland. This biennial conference is run by the Breast Cancer Foundation NZ and the Breast Special Interest Group of NZ specialists.
It was wonderful to be able to attend in person after being at so many online events over the last two years. We were able to network with breast nurses, radiologists, pathologists, surgeons, medical and radiation oncologists, pathologists and psychologists from across Aotearoa as well as Australia. We also heard from policy makers from Te Aka Whai Ora and Te Whatu Ora. There were some great international speakers, some presenting in person and others online.
Dr Emma Nolan is a breast cancer scientist who recently moved back to New Zealand after training and working in overseas labs for the last 11 years. During her PhD, Emma helped to discover a potential preventative medication, Denosumab, that could potentially prevent or delay breast cancer arising in high-risk women who inherit a faulty BRCA1 gene. This exciting finding led to the initiation of the first-ever international phase III breast cancer prevention study for BRCA1-mutation carriers, which began recruitment in 2018. See here for more on this.
BCAC member group Breast Cancer Cure has announced a new partnership with Cancer Research Trust to fund New Zealand research into breast cancer. Both organisations are philanthropic funders that have raised and granted millions of dollars to local cancer research over the last 25 years. The new funding will enable at least two new breast cancer research projects to be added to the work already being supported by Breast Cancer Cure. Researchers have until 1 September 2022 to apply for the new funding.
Recently, BCAC and Sweet Louise filmed more stories from women living with advanced breast cancer. These new videos add further voices to the collection of He Koha a Mua, Gifts to the Future legacy videos. This project is a collaboration between BCAC, Sweet Louise, Breast Cancer Foundation NZ and Metavivors NZ that aims to record the experiences of these women, as well as wisdom and insights that they would like to share. The video collection is a way to honour the women interviewed, to celebrate their strength and beauty, and to provide inspiration and information to others facing a similar diagnosis.
Latest results from clinical trials with trastuzumab deruxtecan (brand name: Enhertu) have shown significant benefits for two groups of patients with advanced breast cancer: those with high levels of HER2 (HER2 positive), and also those with low levels of HER2 (HER2-low, a subset of HER2 negative breast cancers).
This drug has two components: trastuzumab allows it to home in on HER2 receptors on breast cancer cells, and then the deruxtecan component gets to work killing the cells.
Trastuzumab will already be familiar to those with HER2 positive breast cancer – on its own it is the drug Herceptin, which is routinely used to treat both early and advanced cancers of this sub-type.
Pharmac recently announced $190 million of new funding for medicines. However, only one breast cancer drug made it onto their investment list. Kadcyla (aka trastuzumab emtansine) is currently available in New Zealand only for those with advanced breast cancer. Recent research has shown that it is also useful for women with early HER2 positive breast cancer who have had chemotherapy and targeted therapy (Herceptin = trastuzumab) to shrink their tumours before surgery, but were found to still have some cancer left in the breast or lymph nodes at surgery. Pharmac has just announced it will fund Kadcycla for these patients (about 70 women per year). This treatment will halve the risk of cancer coming back for these women.
For many women recently diagnosed with breast cancer, the treatment process can be overwhelming and stressful. In certain situations, doctors may offer treatment with chemotherapy, targeted therapy or hormonal therapy before surgery to the breast and lymph nodes (neoadjuvant).
The Neoadjuvant Patient Decision Aid has been created by researchers at Breast Cancer Trials to help these women make an informed decision about their treatment. It is recommended for women who have recently been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer.
