The Stefanie Spielman Fund for Breast Cancer Research is devoted to advancing research in breast cancer. Over the past few years, the fund has supported researchers and their efforts. Currently, the fund is focused on supporting the following areas:
• In collaboration with Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Stefanie Spielman Endowed Chair in Cancer Imaging recruited a nationally known scientist whose research concentration is translating discoveries made in the laboratory into treatments for breast cancer patients. Michael F. Tweedle, PhD, was appointed to this esteemed position.
• Researchers in Ohio State’s School of Pharmacy and the OSUCCC-James are developing new drugs for breast cancer. The fund will support continued efforts to discover and test these new drugs in clinical studies.
• An invaluable resource to support breast cancer research is a large collection of breast cancer tissues characterized by all the relevant pathological features of the cancers and the treatments and outcomes of the patients with these breast cancers. The fund is supporting two such efforts: The Spielman Breast Cancer Tissue Archive Services and The Spielman Breast Cancer Tumor Bank. Tissue Archive Services, under the leadership of Charles Shapiro, MD, the director of breast cancer medical oncology, uses breast cancers already collected and stored in Ohio State’s Pathology Department. The Tumor Bank collects breast cancers and blood samples from newly diagnosed patients.
Tissue Archive Services and the Tumor Bank allow for promising genes or proteins that first are discovered in the laboratory using cell lines or animal models to be quickly tested for their importance and relevance to human breast cancers that come from patients. Examples of ongoing research conducted using these resources include: the molecular factors associated with basaloid (or estrogen receptor negative), progesterone receptor negative, HER-2 negative (or “triple negative”) breast cancers, and the molecular factors associated with tamoxifen resistance.
On behalf of the entire OSUCCC-James family, we thank you for your generous and continued support of The Stefanie Spielman Fund for Breast Cancer Research.
For more information, contact Jennifer McDonald at (614) 293-3632 or jennifer.mcdonald@osumc.edu. If you'd like to make a gift, you may do so online now. Visit go.osu.edu/GKH to learn more about breast cancer and services offered at The James.
