Hear from renowned breast cancer researchers on the exciting progress they’re making with BCRF’s support
BCRF is celebrating our more than 260 esteemed investigators for their dedicated efforts to end breast cancer at this year’s Symposium and Awards Luncheon, taking place on Thursday, October 30 in New York City.
The event’s symposium, “The Future of Immunotherapy and Breast Cancer,” will feature BCRF investigators Drs. Mary L. Disis, Elizabeth Mittendorf, and Robert Vonderheide, who is this year’s recipient of the Foundation’s Jill Rose Award for Scientific Excellence. BCRF Founding Scientific Director Dr. Larry Norton and BCRF Scientific Director Dr. Judy Garber will co-moderate the panel, and Leonard A. Lauder will posthumously receive the Sandra Taub Humanitarian Award for his visionary leadership and commitment to eradicating breast cancer.
Learn more about the panelists and their incredible achievements here:
Mary L. (Nora) Disis, MD
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington
Dr. Disis is the Athena Distinguished Professor of Breast Cancer Research, Associate Dean for Translational Health Sciences in the University of Washington (UW) School of Medicine, Professor of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Pathology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at UW, and a Member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Her research focuses on the discovery of new molecular immunologic targets in solid tumors for the development of vaccine and cellular therapy for the treatment and prevention of breast cancer. Her team also studies how the immune system can help detect cancer and creates new methods to measure and understand human immunity. Dr. Disis holds a leadership award from the Komen for the Cure Foundation and was recently named as an American Cancer Society Clinical Professor. She is the Editor-in-Chief of JAMA Oncology.
About her BCRF research: To address the threat of obesity increasing the risk of developing breast cancer, Dr. Disis and her team are developing a vaccine that targets inflammation linked to obesity. Their anti-inflammatory vaccine, called ADVac, is one of the first designed specifically to lower breast cancer risk. In laboratory models that mimic human breast cancer, a new DNA-based version of ADVac produced strong immune responses and helped restore healthy metabolism, suggesting it may be able to reprogram harmful fat-related inflammation before cancer develops. Next, the team will refine the vaccine and study how it affects fat, tumor, and immune cells. They will also test whether combining ADVac with metformin, a common diabetes medication, can further reduce inflammation and lower cancer risk more effectively, while monitoring long-term safety in the heart, liver, and gut.
Elizabeth Mittendorf, MD, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Boston, Massachusetts
Dr. Mittendorf is the Robert and Karen Hale Distinguished Chair in Surgical Oncology and Associate Chair for Research in the Department of Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is also the Director of the Breast Immuno-Oncology program and Co-Director of the Breast Cancer Clinical Research Program at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center. Dr. Mittendorf received her medical degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine where she also completed residency in General Surgery. She then served on active duty in the United States military before completing a fellowship in Surgical Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Mittendorf also holds a PhD in Immunology from the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston. She is board certified by the American Board of Surgery.
About her BCRF research: Dr. Mittendorf studies how stress on the immune system influences response to treatments. Her goal is to determine whether a patient’s peripheral immune profile, or “immunotype,” is shaped by lifetime or recent stress, and whether that immune state is linked to treatment response. This may help to identify which patients are most likely to benefit from specific preoperative therapies, and whether stress management could improve outcomes. Dr. Mittendorf and her team will enroll 100 patients with HER2-positive or triple-negative breast cancer to complete surveys on stressors such as trauma, emotional distress, discrimination, and financial hardship. The team will also collect blood samples before and during treatment to analyze immunotypes.
Robert H. Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, FASCO
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Dr. Vonderheide is a distinguished scientist and board-certified medical oncologist who has deciphered mechanisms of cancer immune surveillance and developed novel cancer therapeutics. He is well-recognized for driving the development of agonist CD40 antibodies, now in later stage clinical trials, as potential immune therapy of cancer. Dr. Vonderheide merges his clinical investigations with rigorous studies in genetically engineered mouse models or other laboratory systems. He is a member of several national scientific organizations, including the National Academy of Medicine, the National Cancer Advisory Board Working Group on Extramural Research Concepts and Programs, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Board of Directors, the American Society of Clinical Investigation and American Association of Physicians. His high-impact findings have been published in Nature, Science, Cell and the New England Journal of Medicine.
About his BCRF research: Dr. Vonderheide conducts groundbreaking research that has advanced the understanding of the immune system and gene therapy to prevent breast cancer in women who are at high risk, including those who carry BRCA1 and BCRA2 mutations. He and his team are currently conducting a phase I clinical trial to test a DNA-based vaccine in BRCA mutation carriers with and without breast cancer. The vaccine targets a group of proteins called human telomerase catalytic domain (hTERT), which is overexpressed in more than 95 percent of breast cancers. So far, they have tested the vaccine in more than 100 patients and are now completing a phase 1 trial of healthy individuals with inherited BRCA1/BRCA2 mutations. This is the first prevention vaccine tested in this high-risk population. After finishing treatment and safety observations, Dr. Vonderheide and his team will examine immune response from each trial participant before and after treatment.
The panel will be co-moderated by:
Judy E. Garber, MD, MPH
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Harvard Medical School
BCRF Scientific Director
2024 Jill Rose Award for Scientific Excellence
Dr. Garber is the chief of the Division of Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an attending physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. In addition to serving as BCRF’s Scientific Director and a BCRF investigator, Dr. Garber is a foremost expert in clinical cancer genetics and has played a major role in developing national guidelines. Her interests focus on breast cancer genetics, risk reduction, and developing treatments for individuals carrying breast cancer–associated mutations. Her research includes the study of basal-like breast cancer, which is common in women with BRCA1 mutations. Her first neo-adjuvant trial of cisplatin in patients based on the role of BRCA1 in DNA repair demonstrated a significant complete response rate that has led to a series of trials, including a randomized phase 2 international, multicenter trial.
About her BCRF research: Little is known about the biology of BRCA1 or BRCA2-driven breast cancers that are estrogen receptor (ER)–positive, which may be associated with less-favorable biology and a higher risk of recurrence. Dr. Garber is working to understand the biology of BRCA-associated, ER-positive breast cancers more deeply to ultimately improve treatment for these patients. Her team has assembled tumor samples from a cohort of patients with BRCA1-associated, ER-positive breast cancer and another with BRCA2-associated, ER-positive breast cancer. This year, they initiated detailed molecular profiling and analysis of these samples. They will also include an exploratory cohort of ER-positive tumors that are also deficient in PALB2, another breast cancer susceptibility gene.
Larry Norton, MD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
BCRF Founding Scientific Director
Dr. Norton has dedicated his life to the eradication of cancer, and in 1993, he founded BCRF with the late Evelyn H. Lauder. At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dr. Norton serves as the senior vice president in the Office of the President, the medical director of the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center, and the Norna S. Sarofim Chair in Clinical Oncology. In addition to serving as BCRF’s Founding Scientific Director, Dr. Norton — whose research scope is vast — collaborates with BCRF researchers on several projects. He has been involved developing several effective therapies, including paclitaxel and trastuzumab, and he co-invented the Norton-Simon Model of cancer growth, which has broadly influenced cancer therapy, and the self-seeding concept of cancer metastasis and growth. Over his illustrious career, Dr. Norton has received many honors, including being elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
About his BCRF-supported research: Dr. Norton is involved in collaborations with BCRF investigators on projects aimed at improving breast cancer treatments and advancing our understanding of MBC. Most notable of these collaborations is the Mathematical Oncology Initiative, underwritten through generous support from the Simons Foundation. The Mathematical Oncology Initiative brings together mathematicians, biologists, oncologists, and other scientists to develop new tools to interpret, model, and understand scientific data.
