Update to the 2014 Landscape Analysis: Thought Leader Interviews and Survey

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The MBC Alliance has updated the Thought Leader section of Chapter 2 of the original 2014 Landscape Analysis, with the goal of understanding recent progress and future directions in metastatic breast cancer (MBC) research. In Fall 2020, the Alliance conducted interviews with 20 Thought Leaders (called Key Opinion Leaders in 2014), including people living with MBC and individuals working in academia, industry, government, nonprofit organizations, and the research community. Next, using learnings obtained from these interviews, a survey was developed, and 119 Thought Leaders responded to the survey in Spring 2021. A new report is now available describing the responses of Thought Leaders to the survey. The knowledge gathered from this project is being used to inform the Alliance’s 5-year strategic plan.

Important priorities for the Alliance identified in this project include:

  • Education for patients and advocates about basic research, clinical trial endpoints, and genetic testing; education for researchers about the realities of living with MBC and meaningful collaborations with patient advocates; and education for clinicians about the value of patient registries.
  • The need to re-evaluate the current inventory of resources offered by its member organizations to identify programming gaps related to clinical trials, education, collateral damage, and conversations about MBC in all breast cancer communities.
  • Continued advocacy efforts in promoting liquid biopsies in clinical trials, continued availability of telehealth, increased access to serial biopsies from all populations, data sharing, patient-centric trial design, and including patient-reported outcomes in clinical trials.
  • Continued support for collaboration among stakeholders, big data efforts, interactions between the Alliance and its member organizations to reach common goals, and the value of registries including MBC Connect.

Read the Press Release HERE.