48 | OCTOBER 31 • 2019 

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A

bout 2.1 million 
women worldwide 
developed breast can-
cer in 2018, according to the 
World Health Organization.
Last year also saw some 
627,000 fatalities due to breast 
cancer — nearly all because 
their cancer had spread to dis-
tant organs.
Israeli researcher Neta Erez 
is trying to find out how the 
cancer spreads in a bid to stop 
it.
“Most studies are still 
done on the primary tumor, 
but that’
s not what kills the 
patient,” Erez said. “If we can 
intervene at an early stage, we 
may be able to prevent metas-
tasis.”
If successful, this could lead 

to significant improvements in 
cancer treatment and surviv-
ability.
Erez, chairwoman of the 
Department of Pathology at 
Tel Aviv University’
s Sackler 
Faculty of Medicine, is one of 
many Israeli cancer specialists 
studying breast cancer, which 
strikes Ashkenazi Jewish 
women at three times the rate 
of the general population. 
That’
s because Ashkenazi 
women are much more like-
ly to carry mutations in the 
BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that 
lead to extremely high rates of 
developing cancer.
Even so, 99 percent of breast 
cancer patients whose tumors 
are diagnosed and removed 
at an early stage are still alive 

after five years. That five-year 
survival rate drops to 92 per-
cent if the tumor reaches Stage 
1 classification and drops to 
just 14 percent for patients 
who have the Stage 4 disease.
The key to improved out-
comes, Erez says, is to stop the 
disease from spreading.
“We no longer look at 
tumors as a bunch of cancer 
cells, but as multicellular 
organs. They actually recruit 
and hijack lots of so-called 
normal cells that then become 
part of the tumor,” she said. 
“We’
re trying to understand 
the interactions and relation-
ships between those tumor 
cells and the normal cells that 
get hijacked.”
October was Breast Cancer 

Awareness Month. In the 
United States, where breast 
cancer is the most common 
cancer among women, there 
were countless fundraising 
events, marches for cures and 
other efforts to raise money 
for research to fight the dis-
ease.
The Israel Cancer Research 
Fund (ICRF), which raises 
money in the United States 
for cancer research at Israeli 
universities, hospitals and 
other institutions, has long 
been a funder of breast cancer 
research. Erez is one of the 
organization’
s grant recipients.
So is Dr. Gad Rennert, 
director of the Clalit National 
Israeli Cancer Control Center 
in Haifa, who is studying 
why breast cancer is so prev-
alent among pre-menopausal 
women under age 45.
“Most cancers develop over 
a pretty long period, maybe 
10 to 15 years,” said Rennert, 
whose lab is the recipient of 
a $420,000, three-year ICRF 
grant split evenly between the 
City of Hope Cancer Center 
in Los Angeles and his agency. 
“So, when a woman develops 
cancer at 35, you’
ve got to 
wonder what happened to her 
at age 25.”
Rennert’
s project is ana-
lyzing the DNA of newly 
diagnosed young women 
with breast cancer — Stage 
1 patients up to 35 years old 
and Stage 2 patients up to 45 
— and testing their DNA for 
changes in about 130 genes 
known to be involved in the 
development of breast cancer.
“I don’
t have Phase 2 results 
yet, but in Phase 1 we iden-
tified another 10 percent of 
women with mutations in 
other genes or rare mutations 
in BRCA,” he said. “We’
re try-

Israeli Research

Health | Israel’s role

Scientists study how breast 
cancer spreads in search 
of a cure. 

LARRY LUXNER JTA

The five-year survival rate 
for breast cancer is 99 
percent if caught in an early 
stage, but just 14 percent 
for patients diagnosed with 
Stage 4 of the disease.