Road to a Cure - ABC with Dr. Fatima Cardoso
Titles and Affiliations
Fatima Cardoso, MD, is director of the breast unit of the Champalimaud Clinical Center in Lisbon, Portugal. She spent the early part of her medical career in Belgium but returned to Portugal in October 2010 to create the Breast Unit of the Champalimaud Clinical Center, leading it to become the first certified breast unit in Portugal.
Recognizing that MBC or the term she prefers Advanced Breast Cancer was a disease that was often neglected in favor of finding new treatments for early breast cancer, Dr Cardoso was instrumental in establishing the biennial ABC conferences, the first of which took place in 2011 in Lisbon. In 2016 she launched the ABC Global Alliance in Paris to continue the work of the conferences. Since then membership has grown; currently there are 177 members (scientific institutions, patient advocacy organisations, individuals and companies) in 84 countries around the world. iDr. Cardoso currently serves as president of the Advanced Breast Cancer Global Alliance and of the ABC International Consensus Guidelines Conference. She is editor-in-chief of The Breast Journal, associate editor of the European Journal of Cancer, and an editorial board member of several other journals.. She was awarded the prestigious Order of Santiago da Espada for Scientific Merit, from the President of Portugal in 2015. Earlier this year she was honored with the ESO Umberto Veronesi Memorial Award
The European School of Oncology (ESO), together with the Advanced Breast Cancer Global Alliance, awarded their 2019 Advanced Breast Cancer Award to Dr Cardoso "in recognition of her foresight in understanding the importance of advanced breast cancer and for launching a Global Alliance against it". Dr Larry Norton, Medical Director of the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York City (USA), presented Prof Cardoso with the award on Thursday 14 November at the start of the Advanced Breast Cancer Fifth International Consensus Conference (ABC5) in Lisbon.
“Do I believe that metastatic breast cancer can be cured? I believe that one day possibly some of the subtypes of breast cancer will be able to be cured. I don't think it will be in the next 10 years, but I do believe that some of these subtypes can reach the possibility of really transforming itself into a chronic disease.”
This special series, Road to a Cure, has been produced by Victoria Goldberg, Paula Jayne, Ellen Landsberger, and Kate Pfitzer.
Mentioned in this Episode
ABC Global Alliance
Sixth International Biannual Consensus Conference (#ABC6Lisbon)
Sixth International Biannual Consensus Conference ended in Lisbon, Portugal two weeks ago on November 6th, 2021 after 3 days of lively discussions and sessions. As Dr. Cardoso has mentioned in our interview it was Virtual once more. The Advanced Breast Cancer International Consensus Conferences have been running for a decade, meeting every two years to share and discuss the latest research on ABC, and to update international guidelines on how best to treat patients. The new guidelines from this year’s meeting will be published in early 2022.
At the conference, all topics are always presented from the perspective of a multidisciplinary and multi-professional approach, from basic research to clinical implementation.The important news that came out of this conference is that Patients with two out of the three most common types of metastatic breast cancer ( estrogen receptor positive and HER2 positive which together make up 85% of cases) now have an average survival time of at least five years. This means that half of patients with these cancers may live for more than five years, with some living for as long as ten years and longer. Triple negative is the third subtype, and it has fewer treatment options and patients have worse survival as a result. In the last couple of years, hope has risen for this subtype as well, with two new treatments providing some survival benefit.
A key objective of the Advanced Breast Cancer Conferences and the ABC Global Alliance, delineated in the ABC Global Charter , is to double the survival among patients with the disease by 2025. Chair of this year’s Conference and of the ABC Global Alliance, Dr. Fatima Cardoso, closed the conference by saying
“This disease is still incurable, but we have come a long way and this progress makes me feel hopeful. It means that for the majority of patients, they have two or three extra years of life, with good quality of life as well. Survival has also improved for patients with triple negative disease, but we need to do more for these patients, especially as it tends to affect younger people who often have young children to care for.”
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