Each year, May 20^th is recognized as Clinical Trials Day across the globe. In honor of this, we are highlighting various multi-centre clinical trials that are currently recruiting participants. Clinical trials are important for the advancement of cancer treatment and care, as well as important in improving the standard-of-care.

Our latest digital magazine COVID-19 and Breast Cancer: Patient Voices, Expert Knowledge approaches the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of breast cancer patients and provides credible information for breast cancer patients from healthcare professionals and experts.

Breast cancer research continues to show promising results and advances in the detection and treatment of the disease. More and more, work is being done in this area and studies provide hope to those diagnosed and living with breast cancer. With article headings boasting about new, better, and less invasive ways to treat breast cancer, it is important to understand the actual findings of the study and not get caught up in exciting headlines and summaries. In other cases, you may come across the results of a study from a news article or elsewhere online.

In today’s post, we provide the questions that were sent in and asked during the live session of our Questions and Experts session held in April 2021. In this session, Dr. Sandeep Sehdev, MD, FRCPC, a Medical Oncologist, answered questions about HR-positive breast cancer. In the parentheses, you’ll find the timestamp of where to find the question in the on-demand video.

In today’s post, we provide the questions that were sent in and asked during the live session of our Questions and Experts session held in April 2021. In this session, Dr. Karen Gelmon, MD, FRCPC, a Medical Oncologist, answered questions about HER2-positive breast cancer. In the parentheses, you’ll find the timestamp of where to find the question in the on-demand video.

Last year, we wrote a blogpost on the importance of advocating for yourself as someone with breast cancer. We also shared tips on how to go about becoming an advocate and being a part of your healthcare team. While the information shared is valuable and reflects situations you may find yourself in, we believe that the best way to learn is to hear from people who have been there already.

The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium is the annual breast cancer conference that brings together researchers, clinicians, patients and manufacturers from all over the world to discuss the latest breast cancer research. While the 2020 symposium was held virtually, there was still an incredible amount of new research shared.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘advocate’ as a verb that means “to support or argue for”. ‘Self-advocacy is defined as “the action of representing oneself or one's views or interests”. While the word, advocate might make us think of protests or political signs, that is not always the case. As someone with a breast cancer diagnosis, self-advocacy and being an advocate simply means being a part of your health care team. It means knowing yourself and speaking up for yourself to make sure that your cancer care needs are met. Self-advocacy is part of participatory medicine where “patients are actively working alongside their physicians to choose the best course of cancer treatment.”

Research on breast cancer, and more specifically, metastatic breast cancer (mBC), is critical in helping us better understand this disease. While widespread knowledge of mBC is still limited, there are studies that look specifically at the detection, prognosis and treatment of this type of breast cancer. Similarly, clinical trials on metastatic breast cancer are crucial in helping researchers improve the current standard of care. Below are some of the latest research and some currently recruiting clinical trials on metastatic breast cancer.

As with most other events planned for this year, the ASCO 2020 Conference was rescheduled as a virtual event, originally set to be held in Chicago from May 29^th to 31^st. The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Conference is a key research conference that brings together clinicians, researchers, and patient advocates from around the world. The conference included over 5,000 abstracts, posters, slides and videos, a day of video broadcasts and around 147 virtual exhibits. While we weren’t able to come together in person this year, ASCO successfully hosted a virtual conference that shared an incredible amount of research that’s relevant to breast cancer patients. Below are some of the highlights.

Every year clinicians, researchers, patient advocates and industry members head to Texas to share the latest breakthroughs in breast cancer research. It’s a key conference to learn about new treatments or new standards of care for breast cancer patients. Here’s some of the highlights that have the most impact on patient care today:

This year I was honoured to participate as a patient representative on the steering committee of the Canadian Cancer Research Conference hosted by the Canadian Cancer Research Alliance at the beginning of November.