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In honor of a group that has raised so much money for breast cancer research, and of an Indianapolis woman who died of breast cancer, the Indiana University Cancer Center will name its new clinic the Catherine Peachey Breast Cancer Prevention Clinic.
The announcement was made Thursday at a luncheon at the Boathouse Restaurant to thank area residents who have helped raise funds for the Cancer Center.
Mary Maxwell, of the IU School of Medicine Office of Gift Development, said money raised by the Catherine Peachey Fund has helped 135 members of the Cancer Center to "put their ideas to work" by financing initial research projects.
The missing link, she said, is the need to "build a bridge from the laboratory to the patient's bedside" by addressing cancer control and prevention.
To that end, the Cancer Center is adding the Catherine Peachey Breast Cancer Prevention Clinic, Maxwell said. And the clinic, said Connie Rufenbarger, editor of the "Just Peachey" cookbook and well-known Warsaw breast cancer advocate, will be the recipient of the proceeds of the Peachey Fund's next fund-raiser, "A Day at the Lake" on Sept. 15.
This year's goal is to raise $100,000, Rufenbarger said. So far $55,000 has been raised and tickets have not yet been put on sale.
Dr. Anna Maria Storniolo, who will be a speaker at "A Day at the Lake" also spoke at Thursday's luncheon, explaining ductal lavage, one of the newest tools doctors can use for identifying conditions leading to breast cancer.
"Ductal lavage gives me a window, gives me a picture, into the inside of the breast, into the breast duct," she said.
With ductal lavage, a hair-thin catheter is inserted into a milk duct and cells are flushed out using a saline solution. The cells are then sent to a lab to be analyzed, Storniolo said.
"We don't see a lot of cancer, but in about 20 percent of cases we see atypia ... ," which is the stage that precedes cancer, she said.
The patient can then be treated with tamoxifen, a hormonal therapy that is used to reduced the chances of breast cancer developing or recurring.
Ductal lavage also gives doctors the ability to track the progress of cells without invasive procedures such as needle biopsies. The procedure would allow doctors to monitor the effectiveness of therapies. It also allows direct treatment of a breast cancer tumor , instead of using chemotherapy.
"The sooner we know how it all happens, the sooner we can figure out how to prevent it from happening and start raising money for something else," the doctor said.
Storniolo will return to Warsaw Sept. 15 to give a presentation on the future of breast cancer prevention during "A Day at the Lake."
