Breast cancer thrivers and a BCRF-funded researcher spoke about the troubling trend
Key Takeaways
- The Breast Cancer Research Foundation hosted a virtual panel to discuss the alarming rise of breast cancer in women under 50.
- BCRF-funded investigator Dr. Ann Partridge spoke about what we know about the increase and what we’re still figuring out.
- Content creator and breast cancer thriver Miranda McKeon shared her experience being diagnosed at just 19 years old.
On Sept. 24, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) hosted an important virtual panel about an alarming trend: The rise in breast cancer in younger women.
BCRF’s Sadia Zapp, managing director, communications and content, who was diagnosed with breast cancer at 36 years old, led the conversation with BCRF researcher Dr. Ann Partridge of Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, as well as content creator and breast cancer thriver Miranda McKeon, who was diagnosed when she was just 19.
The virtual panel occurred on the heels of two major announcements from BCRF:
- The Foundation is funding more than $75 million in scientific grants to over 280 scientists (including Dr. Partridge) across 18 countries for 2026-2027, a record amount.
- In partnership with the Estée Lauder Companies, BCRF established the Breast Cancer Research Foundation’s Global Research Initiative on Breast Cancer in Younger Women.
Ahead, learn the key takeaways from the virtual panel.
Rising rates
With breast cancer rates rising at double the rate in women 49 and under compared to those over 50, BCRF shed light on a topic that is affecting more young women than ever, not only in America but around the world.
McKeon opened the conversation by sharing her experience being diagnosed with stage 3 invasive ductal carcinoma five years ago, while in college. Her course of action after diagnosis began with freezing her eggs, before undergoing chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and 25 rounds of radiation. She is now in medically-induced menopause. Dr. Partridge says a breast cancer diagnosis is “pretty rare” for someone as young as McKeon, “but it can and does happen,” and her research aims to figure out why.
“Cancer itself is a disease of aging, generally,” Dr. Partridge says. “What’s going on biologically when a person gets breast cancer at a young onset age? We need to understand what’s going on in our society, in our environment, in our bodies.”
As of now, there’s no one reason, but certain risk factors like pregnancy at a later age and alcohol intake may hold clues. One of the challenges of finding breast cancer in young women is that many aren’t of screening age (40) when they’re diagnosed. A further concern is that younger women are often diagnosed with more advanced and more aggressive forms of the disease.
Treatment side effects
McKeon spoke about going through menopause alongside her mother, which was “the weirdest time in life, ever.” She and Dr. Partridge discussed the importance of staying on hormone therapy after treatment ends, if prescribed, as it can dramatically reduce the risk of breast cancer recurrence. These medications, which include aromatase inhibitors and selective estrogen receptor modulators such as tamoxifen, are associated with a 30% improvement in survival. Dr. Partridge mentioned that these days, it’s common to add another targeted treatment called a CDK4/6 inhibitor to further reduce risk.
But Dr. Partridge acknowledged that it’s not always easy to be on these medications, and that many people experience side effects. Part of her BCRF-funded research is looking at a remote intervention tool for patients to use between appointments to monitor side effects. Open communication with their physician, she says, can help patients find relief. That’s what worked for McKeon, who spoke candidly about using vaginal estrogen to help with sexual side effects.
“You just have to keep on bringing up those uncomfortable concerns, because there normally are always solutions to a hard problem that you’re facing in the doctor’s office,” she says.
Hormone replacement therapy
Taking menopausal hormone replacement therapy (MHT) was another topic that came up, with Dr. Partridge saying it again warrants a discussion between a patient and their physician.
“It really is very dependent on both the patient, the risk of her disease, and the type of disease she has,” Dr. Partridge says. “This is a real conversation one has to have about one’s unique circumstances in their breast cancer survivorship trajectory.”
She also cautioned that MHT isn’t always the miracle drug it’s purported to be.
“People think that taking MHT is like the fountain of youth, but the fact is, when we’ve studied it in randomized trials, it helps some things, but it doesn’t help some of the things we were hoping it would,” she says, noting it has not been shown to prevent dementia or heart disease. But again, consult your physician before starting or stopping any treatment.
Fertility concerns
McKeon also opened up about fertility preservation, admitting that she didn’t understand the connection between breast cancer and fertility at the start of her journey. It’s been an isolating experience for someone her age; for example, someone at the bathroom might ask her for a tampon, but she doesn’t carry them due to being in medically-induced menopause. She says that while she’s grateful to be a breast cancer thriver with so much life ahead, she does worry about the health challenges that might come from facing cancer and its treatment at such a young age. It’s a very real invisible part of survivorship that most people don’t think about or see, Zapp added.
Recognizing the importance of fertility to young women diagnosed with breast cancer, Dr. Partridge spoke about another BCRF-funded trial, the POSITIVE trial, which found that certain patients with early hormone receptor-positive breast cancer could temporarily interrupt endocrine therapy to pursue pregnancy without worsening short-term outcomes, as long as they went back on treatment after delivery and nursing. The vast majority of trial participants, Dr. Partridge said, had a live birth, and there were fewer recurrences in the women who got pregnant than the women who didn’t.
Lessons learned
The conversation turned to what McKeon would have told herself at the start of her journey five years ago. In addition to telling herself to “get ready to lift some weights and get active,” she said she’d offer herself more grace for wanting to keep up with the intensity of a college lifestyle—school, parties, relationships—no matter how incompatible it was with her life at the moment.
“I wanted to be just like all of my friends, but the reality was that that was not my reality at the time,” she says.
The panelists then discussed risk and how important it is for women to know their family history—including on their father’s side—as it can impact at what age they should begin breast cancer screening. They also spoke about promising new screening tools, like blood tests to find cancer (liquid biopsy) and the FDA-authorized, BCRF-funded Clairity Breast, which incorporates AI to determine a woman’s risk of breast cancer using just a standard mammogram.
Bottom line
McKeon closed the discussion by saying that a cure would put an end to the “uneasiness” she feels as a breast cancer thriver. She’s grateful for the research that saved her life, and hopeful that future findings will end breast cancer for all.
“The advancements have been incredible,” she says. “And yet, this is not even close to being done.”
