In April 2023, the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance (LBCA) welcomed Shani Paluch-Shimon, MD, and George Sflomos, PhD, to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB).
Dr. Paluch-Shimon, a medical oncologist, is the breast oncology program director at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem. Her key areas of clinical interest and research are breast cancer in young women, BRCA-associated breast cancer, triple-negative breast cancer, and health disparities amongst women with breast cancer.
Dr. Paluch-Shimon has co-authored over 70 scientific papers and has authored European School of Oncology (ESO) – European Society For Medical Oncology (ESMO) international guidelines on breast cancer in young women as well as the ESMO clinical practice guidelines on screening and prevention of cancer in individuals with a hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome. She is a member of the ESO-ESMO international consensus panel for the management of advanced breast cancer. Dr. Paluch-Shimon is also a current member of the ESMO Breast Faculty, a core faculty member in the European School of Oncology, and co-chair of ESO’s Breast Cancer in Young Women Conference.
Dr. Sflomos is a cancer research senior scientist at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. He spent 10 post-PhD years in basic and translational research in oncology, with a specific focus on solid tumor cancers, and now focuses on invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC). His research includes investigations of the molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis of hormone-dependent breast cancer and developing optimized xenografts for ILC. The experimental approaches and tools he has developed expand the options for preclinical breast cancer experimental and translational research.
Dr. Sflomos also leads the Working Group 4 (WG4) of the ILC Model Systems within the European Union funding program COST Action LOBSTERPOT (CA19138), an initiative of the European Lobular Breast Cancer Consortium (ELBCC).
Dr. Sflomos is already a familiar face to LBCA. Last October, he presented the basic research portion of the LBCA-hosted webinar Highlights of the 2022 Joint International ELBCC/Lobsterpot & LBCA Invasive Lobular Carcinoma Symposium. He is also a member of an SAB subcommittee focusing on helping to accelerate the development of more ILC research models. Dr. Sflomos’ research has included a comprehensive study focused on ILC models with the goal of ultimately improving the treatment of people with ILC. The study, titled Atlas of Lobular Breast Cancer Models: Challenges and Strategic Directions, appeared in Cancers in the summer of 2021. In November 2021 he provided LBCA with a lay summary of this study.
LBCA also recognizes and thanks Dr. Chris Li from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center as he steps down from the SAB after multiple years of service.
LBCA’s SAB members are an internationally renowned group of clinicians and scientists with significant experience studying ILC. They are committed to LBCA’s mission, vision, and goals and are a critical resource for LBCA helping us to ensure that all information developed and shared is current, relevant, and accurate.
SAB members help provide strategic guidance and assist with the implementation of LBCA’s planned research advocacy, ILC education, and ILC research grantmaking activities. They work with the LBCA Patient Advocate Advisory Board to assist LBCA in identifying priority areas for ILC research, and they work in collaboration with other scientists and advocates so that we can effectively and collectively advance the most important research efforts in these areas.
