5 Takeaways from BCRF’s Webinar on Advancements in Metastatic Breast Cancer Care

Breakthroughs in treatment and support are helping more people manage MBC for years

In recognition of Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day on October 13, BCRF hosted an insightful discussion on advances in metastatic breast cancer (MBC) care. The conversation centered on what’s driving longer survival today, how metastatic breast cancer patients find hope amid uncertainty, and potential opportunities to find cures for these diseases in the future.

Joining BCRF’s Sadia Haque Zapp were two thrivers living with MBC—Christina Thammasen, who was diagnosed in 2018, and Annie Bond, who was diagnosed in 2015—along with Dr. Lisa Carey, a BCRF researcher and deputy director of clinical sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dr. Dorraya El-Ashry, BCRF’s chief scientific officer. Together, they explored progress across clinical care, research, and lived experience.

Below, we share five key takeaways from their conversation. You can also watch the full webinar above and join our email list to find out about upcoming events.

1. MBC is increasingly manageable long-term

Zapp began the conversation by noting that an estimated 200,000 people in the U.S. are living with MBC—up from approximately 140,000 patients a decade ago. An increase in diagnoses only explains part of the rise of the MBC patient population, though. The larger driver, Zapp explained, is improved outcomes: More people are living with the MBC, often managing it more like a chronic condition and continuing with their everyday lives. As Dr. Carey put it, the aim of therapy for MBC is twofold: Control the cancer and maintain a high quality of life.

This progress shows up in the lives of thrivers. Bond shared that she recently marked 10 years since being diagnosed with MBC at age 26, calling the milestone “surreal.”

“For so long, it felt like this unachievable, far-reaching goal,” she said.

Thammasen said her life went from feeling “very complete” to having the rug ripped out from under her when she found out she had MBC seven-and-a-half years ago, shortly after giving birth to her third child. But she found hope after her oncologist explained that there were therapies available for her specific type of breast cancer. On her latest scan, about 90 percent of her cancer was no longer detectable.

“The side effects can be challenging, but they’re manageable,” Thammasen explained. “Most importantly, I get to parent. I get to live my life. I get to go on trips with my friends and my family, and I just feel like I’m at a really good place.”

2. Biology drives better outcomes

During the webinar, Zapp referenced a recent Wall Street Journal report that said about 20 percent of people with metastatic breast cancer are living at least 10 years after diagnosis. That improvement in longevity reflects how treatment for the disease has evolved to target the biology of each tumor.

Breast cancer is an umbrella term for distinct subtypes that behave differently and need different approaches, explained Dr. Carey. BCRF-supported research into the distinctions between subtypes has helped clinicians match therapies to what’s driving disease in some patients with MBC, which has paved the way for better outcomes. Dr. Carey acknowledged that the first big jump in survival rates for MBC patients came from drugs aimed at attacking HER2-positive disease, which accounts for 20 percent of MBC cases.

Dr. Carey noted that hormone receptor (HR)-positive MBC has seen a meaningful shift as well. For these patients, doctors can now provide anti-estrogen therapies, typically better tolerated than chemotherapy, in combination with medicines that curb drug resistance. This helps keep the disease controlled for longer.

Dr. Carey highlighted triple-negative breast cancer as the other major subtype with real momentum. She explained that immunotherapy plus better-designed chemotherapy regimens and newer targeted drugs are yielding “really nice advances,” even if triple-negative breast cancer remains a step behind HER2-positive and HR-positive disease.

The ability to match therapies with disease subtypes is why more people are living a decade or longer with MBC.

3. Younger MBC patients need more support

Even as newer therapies are extending lives, younger adults with MBC face gaps in care that drugs alone can’t fix. Zapp noted that people under 40 often find their own lumps—and too many are dismissed at first due to an absence of family history of breast cancer or other major risk factors.

Thammasen is one example. While breastfeeding her third baby, she found a blueberry-sized lump, but her primary care doctor initially brushed it off and recommended home remedies.

“By the time I was diagnosed, it [had grown] to the size of a golf ball in just a matter of months,” she said.

Support beyond diagnoses and treatment is another gap. Younger patients are about 40 percent more likely to be diagnosed with MBC than women over 50, Zapp added, yet many feel out of place in support spaces that skew older.

Bond recalled that early on in her cancer experience, she tried to power through on her own but struggled emotionally.

“I was so afraid to tell anybody that I wasn’t OK, or that I felt alone,” she shared during the conversation.

Therapy was useful, but finding community with people who’ve also dealt with cancer is what really helped Bond heal.

Unfortunately, finding a supportive community is not always easy for younger adults with MBC. Both Bond and Thammasen explained that they felt out of place in support groups for people with MBC due to their large age difference with other members. They also expressed they felt that MBC patients were shuffled to the side in some mixed-stage spaces due to an inherent fear of MBC. Patients at earlier stages weren’t ready to hear about their experience, they said.

What helps, they agreed, are age- and stage-inclusive communities where people can share parts of their day-to-day lives, like balancing childcare logistics with infusion schedules, dating with fertility questions, and the grief and humor that coexist with treatment. This type of support not only helps those with MBC—it can provide hope to all breast cancer patients, Thammasen said.

MBC patients “are leading the way in terms of what long-term care looks like,” she said. “My pink sisters can look up to me and know that regardless of what stage they’re at or if they do have a recurrence, there’s still hope for them in the future.”

4. Researchers seek a path to potential cures

Over the past two decades, the outlook for metastatic disease has shifted from short survival to longer, better-quality lives—so much so that clinicians increasingly manage MBC like other chronic conditions, such as diabetes or high blood pressure.

That progress is just the beginning, though. While Dr. Carey noted that doctors “don’t really talk about cures in the metastatic setting,” that may change down the road. “There are some exciting things happening,” she added.

She also acknowledged that she and many other doctors have a handful of MBC patients who appear cured—extraordinary outcomes that researchers have yet to figure out how to reproduce.

“The problem is that I don’t know how it happened,” she said. “Anecdotes aren’t enough.”

Dr. Carey pointed out that mortality declines in breast cancer patients have largely come from better drugs—often first proven in metastatic patients. Now researchers want to zero in on what makes certain responses durable so they can turn rare success into a repeatable treatment.

“It’s entirely possible that we’re actually going to be able to take a run at a cure kind of approach for metastatic disease,” she said.

5. A big, biomarker trial is on deck for 2026

One of the biggest highlights of the webinar was a discussion about what comes next for MBC.  When Zapp asked about opportunities on the horizon, Dr. Carey talked about the Evolutionary Clinical Trial for Novel Biomarker-Driven Therapies (EVOLVE)—a national clinical trial that will match MBC patients to targeted therapies based on tumor biomarkers and then track how cancers adapt over time.

Backed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) and BCRF, the six-year trial is set to begin in early 2026 at 15 institutions around the country. Dr. Carey expects to enroll 700 participants with MBC in increasingly small groups, pairing people with emerging drugs that could potentially treat their subtype of cancer based on its specific tumor markers.

“Fingers crossed, it will give us great insight into both the biology and treatment resistance patterns,” including why a treatment doesn’t work and what to try instead, said Dr. Carey. She added: “I think it’s going to be transformative.”