THE CAUSE

Every three minutes, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States alone.  Last year 50,000 women died of this disease. There is still no cure, and federal funding falls short in supporting vital research that could save lives.

THE RESEARCH

Leisha A. Emens, M.D., Ph.D. is a medical oncologist at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Johns Hopkins University, specializing in breast cancer care. She is developing innovative immune-based therapies for the treatment of breast cancer, a novel cancer treatment strategy that uniquely recruits an individual's immune system to fight cancer in a highly specific way that avoids the debilitating side effects commonly associated with standard cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation. Successful immune-based therapies should also have a long-lasting treatment effect due to the ability of the immune response to persist and become re-activated at the first sign of tumor growth or relapse. This research should pave the way for breast cancer vaccines to become a unique but standard part of breast cancer treatment, and ultimately breast cancer prevention.