Lobular Breast Cancer at the 2024 International ILC Symposium
In September of 2024, the Lobular Breast Cancer Research Program’s Director, Dr. Rita Mukhtar, and research fellow, Astrid Quirarte, traveled to Belgium to attend the 2024 International ILC Symposium.
Patient advocates, clinicians, and scientists attended the symposium to learn and discuss the latest advancements in treating and diagnosing lobular breast cancer. Dr. Rita Mukhtar (UCSF), along with Dr. Rachel Jankowitz (University of Pennsylvania), Dr. Jason Mouabbi (MD Anderson), and Patient Advocate Julia Levine have been working on the development and implementation of the multi-center PLUMB Study: a Prospective study of LobUlar Metastatic Breast cancer using serial circulating tumor DNA to measure disease response. Julia Levine and Dr. Rachel Jankowitz presented the PLUMB study along with the challenges and barriers metastatic lobular patients face. The goal of PLUMB is to develop better ways of monitoring disease and objective endpoints to increase enrollment in trials. To do this, researchers will analyze circulating tumor DNA, standard of care imaging, and medical oncologists’ disease assessment. Circulating tumor DNA is a type of "liquid biopsy" that measures tumor DNA in the bloodstream and is a promising technology to measure treatment effect in clinical trials.
Dr. Rita Mukhtar also presented on the locoregional management of lobular breast cancer, where she discussed how to interpret a pathology report, what the surgical margin statuses mean for patients with ILC, and the barriers to clinical trial enrollment for patients with ILC.
