Research Papers

This paper was published as a result of the research that Dr Fedor Berditchevski et al has completed with the assistance of grants from our charity:

Characterization of the Immune Microenvironment in Inflammatory Breast Cancer Using Multiplex Immunofluorescence

As of 6th September 2021 our supporters have a raised a total of £210,282 for our charity.

Caroline Ballinger presented a cheque to Professor Daniel Rea and Dr Fedor Berditchevski at the University of Birmingham to continue their research into the tumour micro-environment in IBC.

This paper was published as a result of Dr Fedor Berditchevski’s research, which our charity has funded over a period of several years:

The Immune Microenvironment in Breast Carcinoma: Predictive and Prognostic Role in the Neoadjuvant Setting

In December 2019 one of our trustees attended the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) to learn more about recent research into IBC.

One research presentation at the symposium which was of particular interest to us was an abstract that looks at changing the diagnostic criteria for IBC:

Abstract P6-15-03: Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) defined: Proposed common diagnostic criteria and scoring – Moving beyond the subjective ‘clinical diagnosis’ of IBC to advance research

We were pleased to announce that all 3 manuscripts describing the proceedings from the Morgan Welch Program’s 10th Anniversary conference which we attended have now been published in the Journal of Cancer. Thank you to all authors for their hard work in writing up these important papers which will serve as key references for the coming years in this field. The links to the papers, which are all publicly accessible, are provided below for your reading.

First paper:

Ueno NT, Espinosa Fernandez JR, Cristofanilli M, Overmoyer B, Rea D, Berdichevski F, El-Shinawi M, Bellon J, Le-Petross HT, Lucci A, Babiera G, DeSnyder SM, Teshome M, Chang E, Lim B, Krishnamurthy S, Stauder MC, Parmar S, Mohamed MM, Alexander A, Valero V, Woodward WA. International Consensus on the Clinical Management of Inflammatory Breast Cancer from the Morgan Welch Inflammatory Breast Cancer Research Program 10th Anniversary Conference. J Cancer 2018; 9(8):1437-1447. doi:10.7150/jca.23969.

Scientific Summary from the Morgan Welch MD Anderson Cancer Center Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC) Program 10th Anniversary Conference.

We especially wish to highlight this paper because it builds on the previous version of the guidelines published in 2011.

We were pleased to announce that all 3 manuscripts describing the proceedings from the Morgan Welch Program’s 10th Anniversary conference which we attended have now been published in the Journal of Cancer. Thank you to all authors for their hard work in writing up these important papers which will serve as key references for the coming years in this field. The links to the papers, which are all publicly accessible, are provided below for your reading.

Second paper:

Woodward WA, Cristofanilli M, Merajver SD, Van Laere S, Pusztai L, Bertucci F, Berditchevski F, Polyak K, Overmoyer B, Devi GR, Sterneck E, Schneider R, Debeb BG, Wang X, van Golen KL, El-Zein R, Rahal OM, Alexander A, Reuben JM, Krishnamurthy S, Lucci A, Ueno NT. Scientific Summary from the Morgan Welch MD Anderson Cancer Center Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC) Program 10th Anniversary Conference. J Cancer 2017; 8(17):3607-3614. doi:10.7150/jca.21200.

Scientific Summary from the Morgan Welch MD Anderson Cancer Center Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC) Program 10th Anniversary Conference.

This paper is more of a scientific summary of ongoing research in IBC and where it will be heading in the next few years.

We were pleased to announce that all 3 manuscripts describing the proceedings from the Morgan Welch Program’s 10th Anniversary conference which we attended have now been published in the Journal of Cancer. Thank you to all authors for their hard work in writing up these important papers which will serve as key references for the coming years in this field. The links to the papers, which are all publicly accessible, are provided below for your reading.

Third paper:

Alexander A, Arnold TL, Bishnoi S, Ballinger C, Shaitelman SF, Schaverien MV, Cohen L, Dev M, Ueno NT. Survivorship and Advocacy in Inflammatory Breast Cancer. J Cancer 2018; 9(8):1430-1436. doi:10.7150/jca.21281.

Survivorship and Advocacy in Inflammatory Breast Cancer

This is the first manuscript describing anything related to IBC advocacy and survivorship. Given the improvements in outcomes with better systemic and locoregional treatments, we feel it is time to more carefully consider these unique needs in our routine care of IBC patients. We are delighted to share that our charity’s founder and Board of Trustees member is one of the co-authors on this paper.

In November 2017 we made a further donation for IBC research to the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences. We anticipate that by the end of 2018 we will have donated a total of £100,000.

In February 2017 our IBC patient advocates attended the IBC Symposium at M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital in Houston, Texas, where our researcher Dr Fedor Berditchevski presented his work ‘Tetraspanins and the tumour microenvironment’.

We have teamed up with the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences to aid them in their research into inflammatory breast cancer. This is in the exciting new and promising field of immunotherapy. The women in our support group have provided blood samples, answered questionnaires and donated their biopsy samples for the institute’s research into IBC.

In August 2016 members of our support groups were given a fascinating tour of the laboratories and tissue bank at the University of Birmingham, followed by a Q&A session with Professor Daniel Rea (breast medical oncologist) and Dr Fedor Berditchevski (IBC research scientist). This event now takes place annually. We were also delighted to hand over a cheque for £25,000 towards inflammatory breast cancer research that is taking place there.

We have already started fundraising for research into immunotherapy in IBC to continue so please keep us in your thoughts.