Raise $2,500 or more

Supporting people with metastatic breast cancer (advanced breast cancer)

Imagine being told that your cancer has spread and is not curable. People in Canada living with metastatic breast cancer are on lifelong treatments, often with debilitating side effects that take a physical and emotional toll on them and their loved ones.

You can give hope to people living with metastatic breast cancer by investing the funds you’ve raised into innovative research, like the work led by Dr Peter Greer. Dr Greer and his team are working towards the development of a new treatment targeting a protein, Ezrin, which is involved in breast cancer spread and treatment resistance. People with metastatic breast cancer often become resistant to treatments such as radiotherapy or chemotherapy, which researchers believe could be due to Ezrin’s influence on breast cancer cells. Through research and experimentation, Dr Greer’s work investigates whether targeting Ezrin with new drugs could be a promising treatment strategy for people with metastatic breast cancer. By allotting your fundraising dollars towards people with metastatic breast cancer, you are fuelling research, like this, which can help enhance the quality of life for those living with this kind of cancer. Your funds will also connect people with metastatic cancer to others facing the same diagnosis. These connections will strengthen and widen their network and provide them with the information and support to live life to the fullest.

Support and information

“At a time when I was feeling vulnerable, I had found a community and when I reached out to people on CancerConnection, it felt like I received hugs back.” Selena Randall, breast cancer survivor. Navigating a breast cancer diagnosis can be overwhelming, confusing, and scary. Ensuring that people with cancer, like Selena, can access support and information that makes a real difference at every stage of their cancer experience is essential.

The funds you raise can help provide emotional support, improving the mental health and quality of life for those who have breast cancer. This includes access to evidence-based information that can help people with questions about breast cancer make informed decisions.

Our digital and phone support programs are critical to the people we serve, providing information, reducing anxiety, and alleviating the burden that comes with breast cancer. See a breakdown of each of these imperative support programs below:

• Cancer Information Helpline (CIH) is a toll-free helpline available to anyone with questions about cancer.
• Our online peer support program CancerConnection.ca gives people with cancer and their caregivers a safe place to share their experiences and get support.
• Evidence-based information on cancer.ca helps people better manage life with cancer and answer questions they may have.
• Our free wig and hair accessory program provides real-hair wigs for people who have lost their hair due to cancer treatment.

Research - personalized medicine

Just as each person in this world is unique, so are breast cancers. No two breast cancers are identical, as every cancer has a different genetic makeup. Personalized medicine uses information about a person to prevent, diagnose and treat the disease. It helps doctors choose treatments based on a person’s genes or other features of cancer the person has. While there is still a lot to learn, doctors hope that personalized medicine will provide people with cancer better outcomes from their treatment, with fewer side effects and a higher chance of becoming cancer-free.

Designating the funds you raise to research personalized treatments will help support several of Canada’s most promising breast cancer research projects, such as the one led by Dr Vivianne Freitas to develop an artificial intelligence tool that could help predict how people with breast cancer will respond to therapy before treatment. With funding from CCS, Dr Freitas and her team are training the tool using MRI data from 20,000 breast cancer scans and information about how these people responded to treatment. By using this tool on newly diagnosed people with breast cancer, the team hopes to predict in advance who will respond to therapy, reducing unnecessary treatment for those who won’t benefit while saving the healthcare system money.

Research - hard-to-treat breast cancers

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death among Canadian women. Thanks to the tremendous work of researchers, the 5-year net survival for breast cancer for Canadian women is 89%.

But some types of breast cancer, like triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), can be aggressive and resistant to many treatments.

Your support will fund critical research into hard-to-treat breast cancers and fund projects that could help treat cancer at an advanced stage. Contributions designated to hard-to-treat breast cancers gives CCS the ability to fund research projects like the one led by Dr Geneviève Deblois to find better ways of treating TNBC. With funding from CCS, Dr Deblois and her team are building on their past discovery of TNBC cells’ “hidden ability” to change their behaviours in hostile conditions. The researchers are using advanced techniques to study how these cells can adapt and find new ways to survive when others can’t. If successful, this project could lead to the development of new treatment strategies to prevent the cancer from growing and spreading, helping people with TNBC live longer and healthier lives.

Research - clinical trials

Clinical trials are research studies that test new ways to prevent, detect, treat or manage cancer. Clinical trials provide information about the safety and effectiveness of new approaches to see if they should become widely available. Most of the standard cancer treatments used today were first shown to be effective through clinical trials.

Directing the funds you raise to clinical trials can help ensure we can continue to fund trials that lead to groundbreaking discoveries, such as the clinical trials conducted by Dr Timothy Whelan. Dr Whelan and his team have taken an interest in omitting radiation therapy for people who have undergone breast cancer surgery and are at low risk for cancer coming back. The current standard of care for women disease involves daily radiation treatments over a 1-4-week period. With funding from CCS, Dr Whelan and his team studied whether women at low risk of breast cancer based on the size of the cancer and the genetic subtype could safely avoid radiotherapy after breast conserving surgery. Their findings, recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine, confirmed that some people with breast cancer have such a low risk that they may not need to receive radiation as part of their treatment. Your support in funding clinical trials such as these can help us provide an increased quality of life for those affected.