Symposium dedicated to fighting breast cancer

Conference runs through Saturday

SAN ANTONIO – Downtown San Antonio is filling up with thousands of the greatest brains in the world, who are making it their job to fight breast cancer. The 38th annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium is expect to have an estimated 7,500 experts from more than 90 countries.

Every year, the symposium has one or more groundbreaking announcements.

“There are going to be a lot of big events. One of the bigger events is looking at endocrine therapy and how long women should be on it. Typically, we give it for five years. Now we are going to be talking about 10 to 15 years,” said Dr. Virginia Kaklamani, co-leader of the SA Breast Cancer Symposium.

The Cancer Therapy and Research Center at the University of Texas Health Science Center is one of the partners of the event. And this year, Kaklamani isn’t just a symposium co-leader. She’s also presenting some good news about a drug called RAD 1901.

"(It’s) a new drug which affects the estrogen receptor and blocks it for women who have advanced breast cancer, breast cancer that has spread. This is a drug that is very promising,” Kaklamani said.

This year’s symposium sets itself apart from the past on one issue: survivorship. More of the conference is devoted to the issue because more patients are living more years and more of them are surviving the disease.

The symposium runs through Saturday. For more information, visit www.sabcs.org.


About the Author:

Ursula Pari has been a staple of television news in Texas at KSAT 12 News since 1996 and a veteran of broadcast journalism for more than 30 years.