
Congratulations Dr. Lucci, with Kiwana Thomas Gayden, and Carolyn Hall. We have included past board member Kiwana in this announcement as she was a part of this first open call for grants.
November 3, 2018
RE: “Developing Liquid Biopsy Profiles for Inflammatory Breast Cancer patients”
Dear Dr. Lucci,
The IBC Network Foundation is honored to bestow a 2-year research grant supporting your work in inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) in response to our Request for Proposals late in 2017. This disease is a tricky one with the seeming ability to change and adjust to survive the stresses of chemotherapy and radiation. Your research project entitled “Developing Liquid Biopsy Profiles for Inflammatory Breast Cancer patients” is one of great interest to us as well as all the IBC community. Currently research is stymied by limited ability to study this disease, based off many factors, leading ones include the lack of patient samples at diagnosis. Couple this limitation with the fact that we know IBC can and does change and become more resistant as it metastasizes makes a true understanding of the underlying biological nature of the disease of utmost importance. Finding a way to overcome these limitations by studying the blood samples of patients with “liquid biopsies” is a novel and needed way to follow the different components revealed in blood samples, to provide additional information that could be vital in the realization of new and effective treatment plans. Our hope is this research will lend to new discoveries and will impact inflammatory breast cancer not only in the US but will carry into a better standard of care worldwide.
We commend you on your long devotion to IBC discovery and we are very honored to support your work. We look forward to the day we can all celebrate the fact that IBC will only be mentioned in historical medical archives.
Hope always,
Terry Arnold
Founder, The IBC Network Foundation