Unmet Need
Although the California Breast Cancer Research Program allocates research to speed progress against the disease, we don't have enough funds to do all that needs to be done. We're unable to make grants to meet the following needs:
- Clinical Trials In a clinical trial, some patients receive a promising new therapy and the outcome is compared to a group receiving standard therapy. Clinical trials are the way science discovers which treatments work. Currently, almost every child with cancer in the U.S. is treated through a clinical trial, compared to 3% of women with breast cancer. With California's diverse population, statewide clinical trials here could lead to the discovery of information that could be discovered nowhere else.
- Drug Development Developing a new drug can take 10-15 years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Pharmaceutical companies select potential drugs most likely to be profitable; discoveries that are too risky or only have the potential to help a small population may never become treatments.
- Long-term Studies A 20- or 30-year study of California women and girls could reveal a lot about risk factors that lead to breast cancer, and point to ways to prevent the disease.
- Tissue Banks Samples of tumors from California women, along with the women's medical history, could provide answers to research questions now and in the future.
- Services BCRP provides funding for community-based organizations to test services for women with cancer, but once those services have been shown to help women with breast cancer cope or survive, we are unable to provide continued funding.
- Grant Proposals We Do Not Fund During 2000, BCRP turned down 75 grant applications, for a total of $26.1 million. While some of these applications lacked merit, the majority contained good ideas. With technical assistance from BCRP, the majority of these applications could become good, creative projects that could help enlarge the scope of breast cancer research.
Since BCRP's major source of funding, the state tobacco tax, is decreasing every year, it is unlikely that we will be able to meet these critical needs without additional funding from other sources.
