Page 30 - Layout 1

UTHSCSA
DEAN’S MESSAGE
San Antonio Breast Cancer
Symposium:
The world’s hub for breast cancer research, treatment
By Francisco González-Scarano, MD
Breast cancer is never welcome news, but the outlook for this ter-
rible disease is much more hopeful than it has been in the past: Its
incidence has stabilized and cure rates are rising. The improved cure
rates are due to a growing body of knowledge regarding diagnosis
and treatment that is shared globally. And the most significant single
platform for sharing that knowledge has been the San Antonio Breast
Cancer Symposium (SABCS), an icon in the San Antonio medical
world for some 37 years. Attendees from 94 countries now participate
in the world’s largest breast cancer conference. The next meeting is
Dec. 8-12 at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.
The first symposium was held during Breast Cancer Awareness
Week in November 1978. Lasting only one day, it was part of a
three-year intensive outreach program of public and professional ed-
ucation designed to reduce the death rate caused by breast cancer in
San Antonio and surrounding areas. The University of Texas Health
Science Center San Antonio was a key partner in the conference, but
this was still nearly three decades before the Cancer Therapy & Re-
search Center (CTRC) formally became a part of the university.
Other partners were the Texas division of the American Cancer So-
ciety and the Bexar County Medical Society. The program was or-
ganized by Charles A. Coltman Jr., MD, and William L. McGuire,
MD, both professors of medicine in the UT School of Medicine
(SOM). The first meeting featured presentations by a panel of in-
ternationally known specialists, and was attended by 141 physicians
and surgeons representing a five-state area. Three years later the meet- gram at Northwestern University and co-director of their cancer ge-
ing was expanded to two days with a worldwide call for abstracts to
attract and draw from a larger, international base.
In 1990, the CTRC and the Health Science Center entered into a
collaboration known as the San Antonio Cancer Institute (and be-
came an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center), which in
1995 assumed sponsorship of the symposium. In 2005, six years
after C. Kent Osborne, MD, professor of medicine and molecular
and cellular biology, and director of the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Cen-
ter at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, had moved to Baylor,
30 San Antonio Medicine • September 2015
that institution became a joint sponsor of the symposium. Dr. Os-
borne’s continued leadership kept the meeting viable throughout
many changes at the CTRC and brought in the American Associa-
tion for Cancer Research (AACR) as another co-sponsor to broaden
the research audience on a national and international scale. In 2007,
the CTRC became part of the Health Science Center and the SOM,
which gave the SABCS a stronger academic and operational foun-
dation.
DISCOUNTS OFFERED
SABCS as a mecca for breast cancer information provides a special
opportunity for local, area and regional physicians, whether in private
practice or academic medicine. But you do not have to be a medical
or nursing professional to attend; there are discounts offered to the
public and many other healthcare providers.
Virginia Kaklamani, MD, professor of medicine and director of
the Breast Cancer Center at the CTRC, first attended the meeting
in 2000 when she was a hematology/oncology fellow getting a mas-
ter’s degree in clinical investigation at Northwestern University. Dr.
Kaklamani has only missed one symposium in the past 14 years:
when she was busy giving birth to her son.
Dr. Kaklamani was director of the translational breast cancer pro-
netics program before her interest in further study of breast cancer
and the SABCS led her to our SOM and the CTRC, which she
joined in November 2014. Her research interests include families at
high risk for cancers of breast, colon and prostate, and identifying
genetic mutations associated with these increased risks. In fact, she
has identified several genetic mutations related to obesity that also
increase the risk of breast cancer; she has presented these and many
other findings at the SABCS.
Dr. Kaklamani notes that the SABCS is unlike almost any other
cancer conference because of its large international mix, given its rel-
atively small size. On average, there are about 8,000 attendees at the