The Women’s Cancer Research Fund is committed to saving lives by raising funds and awareness for the millions of women and their families at risk for, or affected by cancer. The goal is to advance leading-edge science by supporting the efforts of the nation’s foremost investigators and advocates of women’s cancer research.

EIF’s Breast Cancer Biomarker Project is a multi-year effort led by world-class scientists to find a biomarker – a protein – that would reveal the presence of breast cancer in the blood to provide early detection, predict the potential for metastasis and guide therapeutic response.

EIF’s Breast Cancer Biomarker Project:

Detecting breast cancer early is the single most important thin we can do to save lives. Most women who die of breast cancer do so because the disease was detected when it was too advanced to cure. So how do we catch it early enough? It’s a question that EIF’s Breast Cancer Biomarker Discovery Consortium endeavors to answer. Our blood holds the key in molecules called biomarkers – unique proteins that may signal the presence of cancer. The goal of the consortium project, sponsored by the Entertainment Industry Foundation/Women’s Cancer Research Fund, is to discover which biomarkers are related to breast cancer.

The foundation program has assembled a group of scientists at the leading edge of technology to discover molecular signlas for breast cancer. The study brings together experts in the fields of proteomics, informatics and clinical breast cancer care. The group consists of Bobel Laureates, internationally recognized scientists and leaders of some of the best scientific inistutions. Never before has a group of this caliber collaborated on such an ambitious biomarker study – and this groundbreaking approach is made possible by the Women’s Cancer Research Fund’s leadership and vision.

Scientists conceptualize the project in three stages:

Stage One – apply leading proteomics and gene expression technologies to examin blood, tissue and breast fluids to identify hundreds of biomarker candidates. Close collaboration of the project’s clinical breas cancer experts and technology leaders is critical.

Stage Two – develop assays (tests) to measure the biomarkers at very low concentrations in the blood.

Stage Three – confirm the presence of the most promising biomarkers in hundreds of blood samples from healthy women and women with breast cancer.

The Breast Cancer Biomarker Discovery Consortium’s vision for progress is shared internationally by scientific leaders: support and momentum are growing for the development of biomarker discovery. The EIF is taking a crucial role in advancing the field of biomarker research by funding this important project.

Progress:

As part of a multi-year scientific project, a team of dedicated scientists from around the country have been collaborating, mapping out pathways to creating a blood test to detect breast cancer. Tremendous progress has been made.

In our first year the scientific team built and tested technologies and instruments that could “see” the types of biomarkers needed for an early detection test. We now have these tools.

In our second year we applied those technologies to determine whether we could detect differences between breast cancer and normal breast tissue. We discovered it was possible.

In our third year we completed our blood biomarker “discovery” work. We now have a defined list of candidate biomarkers.

In the next three years we will develop tests to measure the abundance of these biomarkers in the blood of hundreds of breast cancer patients. The ultimate result will be a list of biomarkers prime for clinical research.

Click Here to View EIF Breast Cancer Biomarker Project Scientists