Army of Women

Written by Elaiza Torralba, Research Intern

Racial and ethnic minorities make up about 40 percent of the United States, but they are not very well represented in research studies. Researchers have pointed out that “ignoring the racial/ethnic diversity of the US population is a missed scientific opportunity to fully understand factors that lead to disease or health.”¹

Researchers at the University of San Francisco have found that a protein produced by human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) called cmvIL-10 promotes the growth and spread of breast cancer cells, increasing the likelihood of metastasis. The cmvIL-10 protein is frequently found at higher than normal levels in the blood of cancer patients.

This study will allow researchers to evaluate cmIL-10 blood levels in breast cancer patients and compare cmIL-10 levels in healthy women and women diagnosed with breast cancer within the last 5 years. If the study finds that some breast cancer patients have higher levels of cmIL-10, it's possible that the test might be useful for determining whether some patients might benefit from anti-viral drug treatments. If levels are higher in patients with more advanced breast cancer, then it's possible that screening for cmIL-10 could help doctors monitor whether metastases are more likely to develop or whether a woman's cancer is responding to treatment. This study was launched to the Army of Women on September 15th, 2015 and the research team is still looking for people to participate.

Past webinars from our Research Webinar Series have featured researchers who collaborated with the Army of Women® for the recruitment of their studies and had results to share. These webinars allowed researchers to present and discuss results and conclusions with both study participants and other interested Army of Women members. Many of you have participated in these webinars and we are thrilled to be able to close the loop on study participation and share the results of your efforts!

Dr. Vanessa Sheppard and her research team at Georgetown University have been collaborating with Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation's Army of Women for study recruitment for over six years. The Army helped her team recruit for several studies, including the Protocol for Narrowing the Gap in Adjuvant Therapy (GAP) Study in 2009, the Stepping STONE (Survivors Taking on Nutrition & Exercise) Study in 2011, and most recently the Women's Hormonal Therapy Initiation and Persistence (WHIP) Study in 2014.

"I've been working with the Army of Women® (AOW) since 2009. At the time, I had just received a very large federally funded grant to study cognitive decline associated with breast cancer chemotherapy. I needed 200 volunteers, women with a history of breast cancer and women with no significant medical history. In my experience, healthy volunteers were the most difficult to recruit. In the beginning, enrollment was quite slow.