SABCS 2020 Takeaway by Dr. Susan Love
The San Antonio Breast Cancer Meeting was a bit different this year. The biggest change was that it was virtual so that you could stay in your sweatpants and watch while eating breakfast. Missing were the cocktail parties and other chances to catch up with friends and...
Breast Cancer Treatment in the Age of COVID by Dr. Susan Love
For most of my career, the driving force behind the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer has been the belief we needed to move as quickly as possible to eradicate the cancer before it had the chance to spread. Even though...
Dr. Susan Love Foundation Welcomes Two New Medical Advisors by Dr. Susan Love
I am incredibly excited to introduce you to the two newest members of the Love Foundation team: Dr. Stephanie Graff and Dr. Lina Romero. Expanding our team with these two wonderful physicians will broaden our perspective and reach in myriad ways. Both women bring...
Research in the Time of COVID-19 by Dr. Susan Love
When the pandemic began, Dr. Susan Love Foundation for Breast Cancer Research faced a dilemma: How could we continue our research without putting people at risk? I was especially concerned about our project to map the normal anatomy of the breast ducts. After many...
Breast Cancer Over the Years by Dr. Susan Love
There is something about living in the midst of a pandemic that makes you reflect on what has come before us and what our future will be. When I was training as a surgeon 40 years ago, if a woman was found to have a breast lump, we would schedule her for surgery. At...
Collateral Damage from Breast Cancer Surgery by Dr. Susan Love
As you are probably aware, I am a strong believer in documenting the collateral damage of cancer treatments. Doing so helps people fully understand what to expect. To date, most talk about collateral damage has focused on problems resulting from chemotherapy and...
Diversity in Breast Cancer Research: Black Lives Matter by Dr. Susan Love
From the outset, The Love Research Army has aimed to enroll people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. By doing so, we’ve been able to get information about breast cancer research studies to a broad range of women. This, in turn, helps make it more likely that...
Male Breast Cancer by Dr. Susan Love
I hope you heard the news that our Army of Women now has a more inclusive name: Love Research Army. The Army’s goals haven’t changed. But the new name is part of our broader effort to push researchers toward more inclusive research eligibility requirements that will...
COVID-19 Updates and Upcoming Webinar by Dr. Susan Love
There’s no shortage of eblasts, tweets and notifications going out about websites providing information about COVID-19 for cancer patients and survivors. This is clearly important. Yet the fact remains we still know very little about COVID-19 and how it affects people...
COVID-19 Meets Breast Cancer
If there ever was a time to be impatient that science takes time, it is as the world faces the COVID-19 pandemic. But if there was ever a time to be grateful for science, it is now as well. If it wasn’t for science, we wouldn’t know what this virus is, be able to test...
Collateral Damage: It is Not All in Your Head
As most of you probably know, my own experience with leukemia has made me very aware of the collateral damage of cancer treatments. I’ve often said that to reduce collateral damage we need researchers to use the same technologies they are using to develop precision...
Behind the Hype: Is Artificial Intelligence Better or Just Different?
By now, you’ve probably read or heard the news stories about how Google has created a way to use artificial intelligence (AI) to read mammograms. Much of the news coverage of the research, published January 1 in Nature, seemed to echo the idea that this research...
Reporting Back from the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium
Every year in early December, a large international meeting of virtually everyone interested in breast cancer is held in San Antonio. The tens of thousands of women and men who attend include people living with breast cancer, advocates, caregivers, pharmaceutical and...
Research Worth the Wait by Dr. Susan Love
I love research! That’s why I’ve dedicated most of my career to clinical research—studies that are done on people—to better understand the human breast and, ultimately, gain new insights into what causes breast cancer.To some, it might sound boring to study the same...
Behind the Hype: Breast Cancer Vaccine
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – October 21, 2019 Last week my email burst forth with this headline: Florida woman recovers from breast cancer with trial vaccine. The article was about a woman named Lee Mercker who was treated in a clinical trial at...
Research Worth Watching: Mammary Gland Magic
If you’ve come to one of my talks or read my Breast Book, you are likely to know that I think the human mammary gland is a magical organ. Why do I believe this? Well, for starters, it is the only organ that we are not born with. (Try to think of another one. It’s...
Research Worth Watching: Going Beyond Sex & Gender
This recent paper in the British Medical Journal on breast cancer risk in transgender people receiving hormone treatment sparked my interest because not only did it draw attention to a group of people all too often overlooked by cancer researchers but it showed us why...
Research Worth Watching: Breast Cancer Screening Options
Joan Lunden’s post on Instagram —#10yearchallenge —reminded me how important it is to educate women about breast density and how it may affect breast health. Basically, the breast is formed of milk ducts (usually collapsed if you are not breast feeding) that are...
Research Worth Watching: Overview from San Antonio 2018
The Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium has been going on since 1977! From a one-day regional conference, the Symposium has grown to a five-day international meeting attended by advocates, clinicians, basic scientists and pharmaceutical companies from over 90...
Research Tells Us: Never Assume
The reading I’ve done over the past several weeks has reminded me yet again why it is critical that we go back and question our assumptions about cancer. Assumptions are rooted in the scientific process. Science is all about observing certain phenomena and then...