Dress up or dress down and join the members of Krewe de Pink on Zoom - Saturday, October 24, 7 - 11 PM - for the VIRTUAL 2020 Krewe de Pink Prom, benefiting Tulane Cancer Center's Breast Cancer Research Program.

"We invite the community to come have a great time raising money to continue the fight against breast cancer," said Dawn Arevalo, Krewe de Pink Prom event chair. "Our researchers at Tulane can’t do it alone. They need our help to raise money so they can work on finding a cure. The VIRTUAL Krewe de Pink Prom will be a night filled with fun, live from the safety of everyone's own home! We hope people come for a bit or stay the whole time, and invite their friends from around the world to join in and party with them."

The virtual event will include raffles, a silent auction, friendly competitions, and the annual naming of prom king and queen! Tickets are $25 each, and only one ticket is needed per viewing device, regardless of the number of people participating from the same household. To register - or start bidding on silent auction items! - visit the event webpage at: https://www.accelevents.com/e/KrewedePinkProm2020

Krewe de Pink is a New Orleans-based 501(c)(3) organization made up of concerned and passionate individuals who have all been impacted by the effects of breast cancer and inspired by survivors. The organization produces three fundraising events each year -- the Pink Bra Run, the Krewe de Pink Prom, and Death by Chocolate-Not Breast Cancer -- and has raised more than $100,000 for breast cancer research since 2011.

Proceeds from Krewe de Pink fundraisers benefit the laboratories of Bridgette Collins-Burow, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine (left, top), and Matthew Burow, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, whose teams focus on triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

Approximately 10-15% of diagnosed breast cancers are triple negative, which means they do not have any of the receptors commonly found in breast cancer.

"Specifically, it's defined by a lack of estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and Her2/Neu over‐expression," said Dr. Collins-Burow. "Therefore, patients with this disease have not benefited from advances in therapeutics that target these receptors."

TNBC is more prevalent in African American women, occurs more frequently in younger patients, and has an aggressive clinical history, evidenced by its rapid progression to a metastatic phenotype as well as shorter life expectancy for patients.

"Therefore, it's critical to identify novel targets for treating this disease," said Dr. Collins-Burow. "And we couldn't be more grateful to the members of Krewe de Pink who work so hard to raise important funds to support our work."

For more information on the Collins-Burow/Burow lab, please visit https://burowlab.tulane.edu/lab-members/. For more information on Krewe de Pink and its annual events, please visit https://www.krewedepink.org/.

Pedro Barata, MD, MSc, assistant professor of medicine, will serve as a featured panelist in the Kidney Cancer Association's (KCA) First Annual Virtual Patient Symposium, taking place Saturday, November 7, 10:30 AM - 4:00 PM CST.

This FREE event is an opportunity for patients, caregivers, family members or anyone else wanting to learn more about kidney cancer to hear directly from the experts. Topics will include treatment options and current clinical trials for metastatic clear cell and non-clear cell renal cell carcinoma, biomarkers for kidney cancer, tips for managing side effects, and a survivorship panel featuring current patients who will discuss their diagnoses, treatments, how they manage side effects, and living life beyond kidney cancer.

Dr. Barata will serve on the Shared Treatment Decision Making Panel. Discussion will include the following topics:

"Our goal here is to help kidney cancer patients and their caregivers realize they are active participants on the treatment planning team, right along with their doctors, nurses and other health professionals," said Dr. Barata. "That's what shared decision making means. The patient is not a passive receiver of treatment; he or she should be involved, ask questions, every step of the way. That's an important aspect of their care."

Dr. Barata also believes events like this one will serve as conduits to creating a vibrant kidney cancer community in Louisiana, a goal he has been pursuing since his arrival here at Tulane two years ago, and he encourages local kidney cancer patients to attend the symposium. "Networking is a powerful tool for education, support, planning, and recovery," said Dr. Barata. "I hope to continue to offer these types of events in our area going forward." (Read KCA's blog post on Dr. Barata's efforts to build a kidney cancer community in Louisiana here.)

To register for the FREE virtual symposium, visit https://www.kidneycancer.org/virtual-patient-symposium/.

Tulane University School of Medicine and the Association for Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) is hosting Optimizing Outcomes for Patients with Urothelial Carcinoma, a virtual workshop for healthcare providers, on Saturday, November 14, 8 AM - Noon CST.

The workshop will feature presentations by Tulane physicians Erik Castle, MD, professor of urology, (left) and Pedro Barata, MD, MSc, assistant professor of medicine (pictured in the story above).

Registration is FREE! To RSVP, please contact Greg Clouatre at 504-988-5839 or gclouatre@tulane.edu.

For more information on the workshop, please visit: https://www.accc-cancer.org/projects/urothelial-carcinoma-in-the-community/live-workshop

Hepatocellular carcinoma is a common liver cancer with poor prognosis. With symptoms not discovered until later stages, it is considered the most fatal malignant liver cancer worldwide.

But a research team in the Tulane University Department of Biomedical Engineering is developing a novel cancer treatment that is able to shrink tumors to an average of less than 3 percent of their initial size in a mouse model.

The work of Jonah S. Harmon, Foad Kabinejadian and Joseph Bull, the John and Elsie Martinez Biomedical Engineering Chair, was featured in a recent issue of APL Bioengineering and in a release by the American Institute of Physics. Harmon, the lead author, is a former PhD student of Bull’s and a recent graduate of Tulane’s Biomedical Engineering PhD program, and Kabinejadian is a recent post-doctoral fellow in Bull’s lab.

The paper is titled "Combined gas embolization and chemotherapy can result in complete tumor regression in a murine hepatocellular carcinoma model.” The typical treatment for this type of liver tumor is called transarterial chemoembolization, but researchers say it is invasive and too imprecise to be a local drug delivery method.

To increase the precision, the Tulane team created a combination treatment that involves vaporizing tiny droplets of perfluorocarbon, a common organic material comprised of carbon and fluorine that is used in pharmaceuticals, anesthetics and industrial fluids. The method is called gas embolization, and while relatively new, it is the particular research area of the authors.

“By changing the treatment parameters in this paper, we were able to achieve tumor regression, and by combining our method with chemotherapy we were able to reduce regrowth following treatment,” Bull said. “Gas embolization has never been used in patients. Demonstrating that it can induce tumor regression is really new. We’re very excited about the work in this paper.”

Their study tested gas embolization alone and in combination with two common cancer drugs — doxorubicin (DOX) and tirapazamine. Gas embolization stops blood flow to the tumor, and it was highly effective when used in combination with DOX, Bull said.

The combination of gas embolization and DOX was so effective that, on average, tumors shrank to 2.9% of their initial size. When DOX was used alone, tumors grew to 300% of their initial size.

In the gas embolization method, perfluorocarbon liquid is administered intravenously, interacting with the DOX that has been administered in the body. DOX binds to the surface of the droplets of liquid, which are small enough to travel through capillaries and do not cause blood vessel blockage until they are vaporized. Thus, treatment can be applied locally at the specific site of the tumor.

To turn these tiny liquid droplets into microbubbles and cut off the blood flow to the tumor, ultrasound is applied from outside the body. When exposed to ultrasound waves, the shell of the liquid droplets “focuses the ultrasound to produce a region of low pressure inside the droplet, the nucleation site at which the liquid first transitions to gas, and then the gas bubbles inside the liquid droplet grow,” Bull said, until the droplet turns completely into microbubbles. The drug DOX binds to the shell of the droplet, and the medicine becomes available to diffuse into the tumor, while the microbubbles cut off blood supply.

If you weren't able to attend our recent Community Webinar on Prostate Cancer, featuring Dr. Oliver Sartor, head of Tulane's Prostate Cancer Research Program, the full talk has been posted to YouTube and is available via the link below. We thank Clovis Oncology for sponsoring this event.

Link: https://youtu.be/kdFVFqCl80o

We are deeply thankful to our previous NOLA Bluedoo sponsors, as well as the donors listed above, who have chosen to continue their support of Tulane's Prostate Cancer Research Fund this year, despite the event's cancellation.

Research funds are still urgently needed to assist in the search for new treatment options. We ask that you join these generous donors by making a tax-deductible donation today! Every penny donated is immediately available to Dr. Oliver Sartor and his team as they work to continue their progress against this disease.

To make your gift via credit card, please visit www.nolabluedoo.org and click the link in the red box at the top of the page.

Prefer to donate via check? Please make check payable to “Tulane Cancer Center,” reference “NOLA Bluedoo” in the memo line and send to Tulane Cancer Center, ATTN: K. Green, 1430 Tulane Ave., #8668, New Orleans, LA 70112.