Fight against chronicity, the challenge of metastatic breast cancer

by time news

2024-10-11 07:45:00

Patients affected by metastatic breast cancer live against time but also with the hope that research will be able to reach the chronicity of this disease as soon as possible. “We don’t want to be the lost generation,” says Raquel Campoy, 43, who was given a life expectancy of five years and has already spent four.

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Raquel Campoy, patient with metastatic breast cancer. Photo provided by Cris Cancer Foundation.

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Raquel Campoy, patient with metastatic breast cancer. Photo provided by Cris Cancer Foundation.

Raquel needs to live and continue with her family, she is the mother of two children aged 4 and 5, and this is why she is the protagonist of a fundraising challenge in favor of science to advance the chronicity of her illness and ago as part of World Metastatic Breast Cancer Day, October 13.

Together with the CRIS Foundation against cancer, Raquel asks for 5 euros so that science allows us to “have five more years of life” as part of the campaign #GIVEME5MORE .

“If metastatic breast cancer can become chronic in 10 or 15 years, as many researchers say, we need to do it in 5 because we want to be part of our family’s life. “We don’t want to be the lost generation,” he says.

Raquel refers to her children: “When I see them turn their birthday, every smile hides a lump in my throat because I know that one year older for them is one year less for me.”

Approve medications in less time

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women. Every year in Spain around 36,000 cases are diagnosed and more than 6,000 women die.

Of the total new cases, 5-6% have metastases (when the cancer has spread outside the breast and reaches other organs such as bones or brain) and their survival is between 4 and 5 years from the moment of diagnosis, according to the data cited. from the Cris Cancer Foundation.

For this reason, another request is to urge the Ministry of Health and the autonomous communities to reach agreements to shorten the approval process for anticancer drugs.

THE director of the CRIS Foundation against cancer, Marta Cardona, assures: “Patients like Raquel do not have time to wait the 650 days needed for a drug to be approved in Spain. Patients like Raquel die.”

But public financing of drugs is also important, as happened last September with the drugs Enhertu and Trodelvy, which demonstrated effectiveness and an average survival of 23 months, thus responding to a historic demand from patients who saw how they had been rejected up to four times by the Interministerial Commission on Drug Prices.

Precisely Helena Delgado, another of the patients, is now treated with one of these drugs, Enhertu, and it is the sixth line of treatment since four years ago, in 2020, she underwent a mastectomy and two months later, in a review, notes bone metastases. He was 33 years old and had a son.

Now, every time you go for your quarterly checkup, ask your doctor the same question: “And after this treatment, what else is there?”

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Helena Delgado, with her son, suffering from metastatic breast cancer. Photo provided by Cris Cancer Foundation.

” data-medium-file=” data-large-file=” tabindex=”0″ role=”button” alt=”metastatic breast cancer” class=”wp-image-358259 lazyload” style=”width:372px; height :auto” src=” srcset=” 614w, 180w, 768w, 813w” data-sizes=”auto” data-eio-rwidth=”614″ data-eio-rheight=”1024″/>Helena Delgado, with her son, patient with metastatic breast cancer. Photo provided by Cris Cancer Foundation.

Essential research

In order for Helena and Raquel to continue to have life options, research must continue to advance in search of new treatment strategies.

For this reason this organization promotes various research projects that develop new therapies against tumors, such as conjugated antibodies which release the chemotherapy drug inside the tumor cell.

But it is also important to understand why they are created resistance to treatmentshow tumor cells manage to evade the effect of drugs, which happens in metastatic cases.

In relation to diagnosisthe focus is on artificial intelligence to gain precision and refine with more personalized treatments.

Marta Cardona insists on the need to do research against time and to provide experts with the necessary resources for the chronicity of the disease in metastatic breast cancer.

“There is no plan B, the only plan is to investigate. Research is the only thing that allows us to learn more about tumors, better understand why they appear and how they work, devise new strategies to attack them and create new, increasingly effective therapies,” he concludes.

Another initiative: Spanish cities drop the M from their names

On the other hand, in another different initiative on the occasion of World Metastatic Breast Cancer Day, Madrid, Málaga and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria have put their names on their streets, but with a peculiarity, the M is missing.

And they did so as a sign of support for metastatic breast cancer and the #laMquefalta movement together with the Spanish Association for Metastatic Breast Cancer (AECMM), in collaboration with the Daiichi Sankyo/AstraZeneca Alliance, to raise awareness of the reality that these patients live.

After having painted Madrid’s Sol metro station pink and changed the emblematic “M” of the subway with the “M” of the movement, to encourage dialogue on the disease in 2023, this year several Spanish cities will lose their eme letter .

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The letters from the city of Madrid, without the M, in support of metastatic breast cancer. Photo provided

” data-medium-file=” data-large-file=” tabindex=”0″ role=”button” alt=”metastatic breast cancer” class=”wp-image-358277 lazyload” style=”width:652px; height :auto” src=” srcset=” 1024w, 300w, 768w, 1536w, 1200w, 1920w” data-sizes=”auto” data-eio-rwidth=”1024″ data-eio-rheight=”684″/>Le letters from the city of Madrid, without the M, in support of metastatic breast cancer. Photo provided

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