CHICAGO – The Metastatic Breast Cancer Project is an innovative direct-to-patient initiative that allows metastatic breast cancer patients from around the country – often found through social media – to enroll themselves into a research study, primary investigator Dr. Nikhil Wagle said at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
Patients interested in participating can visit the project’s website and consent themselves into the study. Patients then fill out a questionnaire about their cancer and their treatments and provide a saliva sample using an at-home kit. Meanwhile, researchers obtain medical records and collect portions of stored tumor samples if available. The overarching goal of the project is to expedite metastatic breast cancer (MBC) genomics research by gaining access to a larger pool of patients with MBC and to generate novel research questions. Over 1,100 patients have already enrolled in the study, and many of them fall into groups of patients – such as those with extraordinary response to treatment or those of racial/ethnic minorities – that are normally challenging to capture in traditional studies.
In a video interview, Dr. Wagle of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., summarizes the unique benefits of the project and discusses future plans, which include gathering patient genomic data from blood biopsy samples and expanding the project to other types of cancers.