In October, Susan G. Komen Advocates in Science hosted Coffee Talk: Invasive Lobular Carcinoma and Its Complicated Relationship with the Estrogen Receptor. Hosted by Meryl Weinreb, the hour-long chat featured LBCA Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) member Matthew Sikora, PhD and was moderated by LBCA Executive Director Laurie Hutcheson and LBCA Founder Leigh Pate.

During the hour-long conversation, Laurie and Leigh took turns asking Dr. Sikora questions about his work with invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC), also known as lobular breast cancer. First, Dr. Sikora discussed what ILC is as well as why he decided to study it. He noted that SAB Founding Chair Dr. Steffi Oesterreich “pitched the idea” to him to study lobular breast cancer when he first went to the University of Pittsburgh for his post-doctoral work, and he was excited to dive in to ILC research.

Dr. Sikora then went on to discuss what research has revealed about lobular breast cancer and his own lab’s current work, which has focused on better understanding estrogen receptors in ILC cells. His hope is that it will lead to better treatments for ILC.

Dr. Sikora said, “We know that the therapies that we do have work in principle, we just need them to work better. And really, so many tumor types have been benefiting lately by understanding their biology to develop new targeted therapeutics that we need to understand whether these work in lobular cancer or whether we can do better.”

Watch the video to hear more of the conversation.

Video posted with the permission of Susan G. Komen for the Cure.