As we get ready to close the books on another year, the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance (LBCA) invites you to take a look back at the stories and resources that were of most interest to our newsletter subscribers and social media followers in 2021. We hope the information we’ve shared has helped increase knowledge of lobular breast disease among patients, researchers, and clinicians, and promoted the need for more lobular breast cancer research.

Top Stories

• My ILC Stories: Throughout the year, LBCA has introduced you to an amazing group of women who have told us about their individual experiences with a lobular breast cancer diagnosis. These stories were consistently one of the most read articles in our newsletters.
• Hormone Therapy Q&A: This scientific blog by Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) member Dr. Rachel Jankowitz was our most read newsletter story of the year.
• Webinar: Clinical Potential of 18F-fluoroestradiol (FES) PET Imaging for Patients with Metastatic Lobular Breast Cancer: This educational webinar featuring SAB member Dr. Gary Ulaner has been viewed more than 1,000 times on Facebook and several hundred more on our YouTube channel.
• 2021 International ILC Symposium: LBCA’s live Tweets during this year’s virtual ILC symposium were read and shared by many. Those who couldn’t make the live sessions flocked to our story on the website, which provided links to the recorded scientific and patient advocate-led session recordings.
• LBCA’s First ILC Research Grants: LBCA’s inaugural year of funding ILC-specific research in collaboration with both Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation and AACR was of great interest to our social media followers and newsletter readers. They followed our progress from the first call for grant applications through our announcement of grant recipients.
• It’s LOBULAR Breast Cancer: In October, LBCA kicked off its new campaign to remind people that it is important to say lobular breast cancer and not just breast cancer to raise awareness that breast cancer has subtypes and lobular is the sneaky subtype.
• Invasive Lobular Carcinoma and Its Complicated Relationship with the Estrogen Receptor: Also in October, Susan G. Komen hosted a chat with SAB member Dr. Matt Sikora focusing on his current research, which also featured LBCA Executive Director Laurie Hutcheson and LBCA Founder Leigh Pate.
• LBCA Presents Results of ILC Imaging Survey at SABCS 2021: In July, LBCA surveyed the lobular breast cancer community online regarding the challenges of ILC and imaging. The survey results dramatically highlighted the issues with detection and ILC tumors and were presented in a poster at December’s San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).
• Imaging Trial – Fluciclovine and PSMA PET/CT for the Classification and Improved Staging of ILC: LBCA readers linked to our website post to learn more about this phase 1 clinical trial to evaluate how well two different drugs work with positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) in helping doctors understand and classify ILC in people with lobular breast cancer that is suspicious for or has metastasized. Our website’s clinical trials page was also a huge draw when promoted on social media and in our newsletter.
• LBCA Scientific Blog: Rita Mukhtar, MD: SAB member Dr. Rita Mukhtar’s December blog about ongoing clinical research in ILC interested followers across multiple communication platforms. Additionally, the study she co-authored titled Decreased enrollment in breast cancer trials by histologic subtype: does invasive lobular carcinoma resist RECIST? gained a lot of interest on Twitter. LBCA’s Lead Research Advocate and Publications/Clinical Trials Curator Julia Katherine Levine was also a co-author.

Top Resources

In March, lobularbreastcancer.org relaunched followed by weekly “Website Wednesday” posts to familiarize our social media followers with the site. In addition to the site itself, our analytics show that the following resources were the most popular with social media followers and newsletter subscribers this year:

• ILC/LBCA Flyer
• Differences Between ILC and Invasive Ductal Carcinoma Infographic
• Metastatic ILC Page

Additionally, our ILC Fact Sheet was one of the most visited resources on our website this year.

We encourage you to revisit all of these stories and resources!