Alastair Thompson is a Professor of Surgery and Associate Director of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Centre, at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston Texas.

Professor Thompson was an International Guest Speaker at Breast Cancer Trials 44th Annual Scientific Meeting in Auckland, New Zealand and we asked him about his research in the areas of DCIS, Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy, and postoperative recovery.

Professor Philip Poortmans is a Radiation Oncologist at Iridium Netwerk and the University of Antwerp in Belgium.He completed his medical studies at the University of Antwerp and was trained as a Radiation Oncologist at the Middelheim and Vincentius Hospitals in Antwerp.Professor Poortmans was an International Guest Speaker at the Breast Cancer Trials Annual Scientific Meeting in Auckland, New Zealand and we asked him about his research in the area of axillary management.

Associate Professor Andrew Redfern is a Medical Oncologist and Translational Researcher from Western Australia, with a particular interest in understanding why breast cancer treatments may or may not work in certain population groups.

Part of his focus is working with Aboriginal Australians to try and answer this question.

Jenni Scarlet is a Research Nurse and Clinical Trial Coordinator at Waikato Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. Her role involves coordinating clinical trials from their set-up stage, obtaining ethics approvals, enrolling and following up with patients, and reporting and analysis of trial information.

During her career of more than 25 years, she has seen vast improvements in patient care and outcomes due to breast cancer trials research. We spoke to Jenni about her experiences in cancer care and why she supports Breast Cancer Trials.

Jan White is a 75-year-old retired Nurse living in Auckland, who used to work in health, disability, and aged care. Since she can remember, Jan has been having 2-yearly mammograms, and like any other appointment, she went in asymptomatic, and expecting the ‘all clear’.

However, the mammogram displayed a lump in her breast, and she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Jan is a participant in the EXPERT clinical trial, which aims to improve the personalised use of radiation therapy in early breast cancer patients.

We spoke with Jan about her diagnosis and her decision to participate in a clinical trial.

Despite CALD Australians representing almost a third of the population, they are often excluded from clinical trials research within Australia. Barriers can include a mistrust and lack of comfort around the clinical trials process, lack of information and resources, time constraints, financial burden, and geographic location.

Dr Rob McNeill is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland, and we spoke to him about his research into the challenges of recruiting Indigenous and CALD patients to clinical trials.

Laura Yang lives in Melbourne with her husband and her 6-year-old daughter, where she enjoys listening to music, playing piano, and spending time with her loved ones. At the end of 2022, Laura was diagnosed with breast cancer, and we spoke to her about her diagnosis and her decision to participate in a clinical trial.

Maria Bodnar is a retired nurse, living in Victoria Australia with her husband. In 2013 Maria went in for her routine Breast Screen test and the following day she received a call from one of the nurses asking her to come in so they could review her results, and Maria knew it was breast cancer.

Maria is a participant in the TUGETHER clinical trial, which aims to find out if adding tucatinib and pembrolizumab to the usual treatment given to people with advanced (metastatic) HER2-positive breast cancer, slows down the growth of the cancer. We spoke to Maria about her diagnosis and her decision to participate in a clinical trial.

As part of Breast Cancer Trials Clinical Fellowship Program, Dr. Julia Matheson is working on a project that will continue research on the existing clinical trial called the Breast MRI Evaluation Study, which aims to establish when breast MRIs improve patient outcomes.

The focus of this Clinical Fellowship project will be assessing the participant experience of undergoing Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) using patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). The hypothesis is that having a breast MRI will influence patient preferences for surgery, satisfaction with decision-making, and confidence in treatment.

Find out more about the aim of this research and some of the barriers to accessing breast MRIs in this episode.

Breast Cancer Trials International Clinical Fellowship Support aims to financially assist promising junior researchers to gain international experience and connections.

Dr Julia Dixon-Douglas has been awarded support in the first year of the program and is heading to France to study novel therapies for breast cancer. Her research may help improve our understanding of which patients will have the greatest benefit from these treatments and how they are best administered to patients.

We asked Dr Dixon-Douglas to give an overview of her project and explain the importance of this research.