Kathy's fight against Metaplastic Breast Cancer

I'm writing this with a very heavy heart after the passing of my mom, Kathy Lynch.  She lost her extremely hard fought battle against a very rare subtype of breast cancer, called Metaplastic, on January 4, 2022.  This awful disease took her in just 13 months from diagnosis, even though she endured every possible treatment the best doctors in the country could give her. Through our countless hours of research on this disease, it is very evident that due to its rarity, it selmdomly receives the necessary funding needed to elicit updated and advanced treatment options, including clinical trials. Mom requested that we do our best to help advance research of this disease so that others don't have to go through what she did. We are working with her team of oncologists from the best cancer facilities nationally to identify a worthy research fund to make the donations to. Once we identify the recipient organization/clinical trial, we will send all funds donated here to that organization and post the details here. Thank you for your contribution to help fight this devastating cancer.

With Love,
Karen and the Lynch/Curry family

 

Metaplastic breast cancer (MBC) is a rare and aggressive subtype of breast cancer, that represents less than 1% of all breast cancers diagnosed annually and traditional chemotherapy and hormonal therapies generally are ineffective against MBC and often associate with a poor survival rate. MBCs tend to present with a larger size, less frequent axillary nodal involvement, and have a higher rate of developing distant metastasis compared to other breast cancers. They are frequently negative for estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and Human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2) overexpression, with 85-89% of cases noted to be triple negative in recent analyses. However, compared to other triple negative breast cancers (TNBC), MBCs tend to have worse outcomes across all clinical stages, with 3-year overall survival for stage IV disease of 15% vs 22% for TNBC, and 64% for all other breast cancer types in one recent analysis of the National Cancer Database. MBCs also have poor response rates to cytotoxic chemotherapy compared to other types of breast cancer. As a result, there has been interest in evaluating novel strategies, including targeted therapies and immunotherapy.