In June 2021, the peer-reviewed online journal Cancers published an article focused on the challenges of invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) research and the new opportunities for collaboration that currently exist with the aid of patient advocate organizations.

The commentary, titled How Researchers, Clinicians and Patient Advocates Can Accelerate Lobular Breast Cancer Research, was authored by Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance (LBCA) Founder Leigh Pate, European Lobular Breast Cancer Consortium (ELBCC) Co-Chair Dr. Christine Desmedt, LBCA Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) Chair Dr. Otto Metzger, LBCA Executive Director Laurie Hutcheson, Lobular Breast Cancer UK Founder and Chair Claire Turner, Lobular Ireland Founding Member Siobhán Freeney, and LBCA SAB Past Chair Dr. Steffi Oesterreich.

The authors discuss the history of effective collaboration among advocates, clinicians, and scientists in the pursuit of advancing knowledge of lobular breast cancer, including how LBCA evolved and has become the advocacy organization that it is today. They describe how including patient advocates collaboratively in research is critical to gaining a better understanding of ILC, the second most common histological type of breast cancer. They also discuss how the unique challenges of ILC research create the need for collaboration to occur even more broadly across and among patient advocacy and scientific groups. This can avoid duplication of effort and ensure rapid advancement of studies to identify targeted therapies and to refine standard of care therapies specifically for ILC. The article concludes with suggestions for promoting more collaboration in the future.

Read the Cancers article in its entirety.