November, continuing the work!
It is mid-November, and we wanted to share more with you about the study and, more generally, about what we are doing at the Rutgers University Genetics Coordinating Center (RUGCC) to help educate and fight Breast Cancer.
Ancestry estimation progress
The first 600 samples we received have gone through pre-processing quality control, followed by genetic sequencing, and are now going through post-sequencing quality control followed by genetic ancestry estimation. We expect those reports will be available to our first participants by the end of December. The next 500 samples are now at the lab, getting ready to go through the same process. As you may have gathered, the lab likes to process samples in batches, so as soon as we have a larger enough collection of new samples, we’ll send them another batch.
Information – Mylie Siegel GCMP ’25
Men have breasts too, and men get breast cancer too—they make up about 1% of people who get breast cancer. Men are usually diagnosed with breast cancer at older ages and at more advanced stages than women. Most of what we know about the genetics of male breast cancer is derived from what we know about the genetics of female breast cancer, largely because there have not been any large genetic studies of male breast cancer. If you know any male breast cancer survivors, encourage them to join our study!
You can read more about the genetics of male breast cancer on our site at https://rugcc.rutgers.edu/genmbc/ .
Impact
An easy way that any of us can make an impact on breast cancer research is to share the vision that one day breast cancer, and other cancers, will be well understood so that we can significantly improve treatments and prevent the disease from progressing.
During the month of November, we continued to contact local, regional, and national advocacy organizations to attend events or share our research study with their networks. We can’t do it all alone; if you know of a group that would be interested or if there are events going on near you, please let us know.
The RUGCC team attended the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk on October 27th in Edison, NJ.
Most of this outreach is virtual. This month we virtually presented at the 11th Annual BM1TMBCH Virtual Conference with Male Breast Cancer Happens. Watch us here!
Your Impact
Thanks to your help, we continue to make strides ramping up our research study. Here are some quick updates:
Sign-in to the dashboard here: https://bcstudy.rugcc.org/dashboard
We encourage you to share this study with others who can make a direct impact and help us reach our goal of 10,000 participants. Remember, anyone who is 18 years or older and lives in the U.S. can join the study, regardless of whether they have had cancer or not.
Thank you for being a part of our research study
Your participation is invaluable and we are grateful for
your continued support
