By Admin at 31 Oct 2016, 15:21 PM

While efforts to diagnose and treat breast cancer have made major strides in recent years, metastatic breast cancer, the type that spreads to other areas of the body including the bones, brain and lungs, is still one of the deadliest cancers.

The more than 150,000 Americans diagnosed with such cancer may be left with few options for treatment and little hope of a cure. The Metastatic Breast Cancer Project, a crowdsourcing effort being run by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s non-profit Broad Institute, is attempting to change that.

They’re soliciting the help of people with metastatic breast cancer to help accelerate cancer research in this area. Already, more than 2,600 patients have joined in via the projects’ website, mbcproject.org.

First, participants fill out a simple online form describing their cancer and consenting to share medical records and stored tumor tissue. They then send in a saliva sample, which can be collected easily at home, and the researchers take care of the rest.

They’re hoping to analyze the DNA of people with metastatic breast cancer to discover unique genetic information that will lead to a better understanding of the disease as well as faster advances in its treatment.

Ordinarily, in order to participate in a study such as this, patients would need to travel to medical centers that may be far from home, presenting significant hurdles for patients and researchers alike. As a result, few patients contribute tumor samples and other data to cancer research.

The Metastatic Breast Cancer Project allows researchers to partner directly with patients, who are able to take part in the study without leaving their homes.

The researchers are using comprehensive genomic analyses to generate a database of genomic and medical information from tumors and saliva samples of patients with metastatic breast cancer.

The database will be shared with the National Institutes of Health and the cancer research community in order to develop new therapies. The Metastatic Breast Cancer Project further explained:

“We believe everyone should have the opportunity to contribute to research, especially now that the combination of genome sequencing and internet-based communication has made it easier to give people that opportunity.

We hope our initial studies will help us understand how genetic mutations in cancer affect response to specific therapies.

By discovering the connections between mutations in cancer and responses to therapy, we hope to be able to better design clinical trials and to be able to predict patients' responses to different therapies based on the genomic profiles of their tumors.”

If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and would like to take part in The Metastatic Breast Cancer Project, you can do so here: Count Me In.

Sources:
The Metastatic Breast Cancer Project
Fox News October 3, 2016

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