One of cancer’s toughest challenges for patients and researchers is triple negative breast cancer. Living with TNBC can be grueling, treating it is difficult, figuring out how to end it is truly an epic scientific quest.
Triple negative breast cancer, or TNBC, is called that because a patient’s cells test negative for both estrogen and progesterone hormone receptors as well as human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. This is what makes it much harder to treat. TNBC is also more aggressive, more likely to recur, and disproportionately affects African American and women of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.
Tower has long known that Dr. John Carpten is the right person to lead this crusade.
We’ve both supported his work as a grantee and benefitted from his insights as a member of our Scientific Advisory Board and Board of Directors. His scientific capabilities and visionary strategic outlook have always been oriented towards equity and imagining the near and more distant future of cancer research and treatment. In 2021, President Biden appointed Dr. Carpten as chair of the National Cancer Advisory Board.
Today, Dr. Carpten is a leader of international prominence, as the director of City of Hope’s National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center, director of Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope and chief scientific officer.
Over the years, Dr. Carpten’s own lab’s investigations into genomics and his untiring efforts to diversify clinical trials have elevated the entire field of cancer research. Implications for patients always guide his work: he cares about people getting help, and ensuring it’s the right help. Deploying rapidly advancing tech to aid in research and patient care is part of his precision oncology discipline.
TNBC disproportionately affects women of color, yet women with other indicators, like the BRCA1 gene mutation, are also more likely to be diagnosed. Over ten percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have this highly treatment resistant form of breast cancer. Dr. Carpten’s work is rigorous, complex, innovative, and ultimately aimed at “improved treatment.” As researchers race to unlock the science for how to end or prevent cancers, including TNBC, the clinical and community-based effort is, indeed, care for every individual diagnosed. Improved treatment while we illuminate every potential path to a cure.
In this season of gratitude, I simply wanted to share the immeasurable value of the work our supported researchers undertake. Your generous giving both fuels the quest to find a cure, and keeps the focus on patient care, every day.