Staff Report
UNM will work with the University of Texas to fight a rare, aggressive form of breast cancer.
The University signed an agreement Monday with the University of Texas-Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center to collaborate on research projects for inflammatory breast cancer.
"It's sort of a seamless integration of research teams," said Dr. Cheryl Willman, director of UNM's Cancer Center. "We bring particular research strengths to the table, as does M.D. Anderson, and we're going to partner those strengths on specific projects."
UNM's Cancer Center got a $3.2 million appropriation from the state Legislature to research inflammatory breast cancer. M.D. Anderson got about $4 million from the Texas Legislature for its research.
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The universities will coordinate research based on their specialties and share the results, Willman said. They will form a national steering committee to work with other cancer research institutes, including the University of Arizona Cancer Center.
Willman said the five-year survival rate of inflammatory breast cancer is about 40 percent. That's low compared to the five-year survival rate of noninflammatory breast cancer, which is about 90 percent for Caucasian women, said Leann Holt, spokeswoman for the Cancer Center.
Willman said inflammatory breast cancer is usually diagnosed too late because it affects younger women than common forms of breast cancer, such as intraductal carcinoma.
"It affects very young women - teenagers through women in their 20s and 30s," she said. "Most women are not recommended to get mammogram screens until they're 50-years-old."
About 1,100 New Mexican women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, Holt said. She said about 5 percent of them will be diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer.
Inflammatory breast cancer is more difficult to diagnose than common forms, Willman said.
"It may not present as a lump. It may present as more disseminated," she said. "It could look like a skin rash. It could easily be misdiagnosed in the first stages."
Inflammatory is not the only kind of breast cancer that will see progress through research, Willman said.
Willman said aggressive forms of breast cancer have been increasing in American Indian and Hispanic women.
"There seems to be a biological relationship between these more aggressive forms of breast cancer," she said.
Mortality rates for breast cancer dropped from 30 percent to 22 percent between 1973 and 2002 for Caucasian women, Holt said. For Hispanics, mortality rates rose from about 20 percent to 25 percent, she said.
