Research Funded

Twisted Pink in collaboration with Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation, has awarded the Twisted Pink Metastatic Breast Cancer Impact Award to Ashley Schreier, DO, MS, for her work studying the impact of immunotherapies on metastatic triple negative breast cancer—the most advanced stage of the disease.  

This two-year $200,000 grant is designed to support hypothesis-driven research projects in either basic, translational or clinical metastatic breast cancer research (MBC), with emphasis on studies with the greatest potential impact to advance MBC treatments and reduce the mortality of MBC patients. The award recognizes Dr. Schreier’s clinical study, “Dual checkpoint blockade with Botensilimab and Balstilimab in metastatic triple negative breast cancer: a pilot study investigating novel immunotherapeutic strategies.”

As an assistant professor of medicine in hematology and medical oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine and an assistant attending physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Dr. Schreier treats patients with all forms of breast cancer, with a special interest in caring for those with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), which has been the emphasis of her research. Dr. Schreier works in close collaboration with Dr. Roberta Zappasodi's tumor immunology laboratory at Weill Cornell, and the two have developed this trial concept as a part of their efforts to develop novel immunotherapy strategies in TNBC.

Metastatic TNBC (mTNBC) is aggressive and challenging to treat; has fewer treatment options; and tends to have a worse prognosis when compared to other breast cancer subtypes. This grant will support a phase II clinical trial using a combination checkpoint inhibitor regimen (botensilimab and balstilimab) with a new marker called CTLA-4 for patients with mTNBC.  

“The proposed project will strive to meet an unmet clinical need with a goal of establishing safety and immune activity of this regimen and ultimately improving survival outcomes in mTNBC, the most aggressive type of breast cancer,” Dr. Schreier said. “My experiences studying chemotherapy toxicities in both laboratory and clinical research settings have fueled my current area of interest in novel combination strategies, targeted approaches, and personalized medicine in oncology.”  

This is a grant from Twisted Pink, with Conquer Cancer serving as the lead organization in implementing and administering the grant through EveryGrant®.

$200,000 grant to support Defining and targeting the epigenetic changes that promote breast cancer metastasis.

$200,000 to support the following research: Strategies to Promote Innate Immune Targeting of Breast Cancer Metastasis

$100,000 was allocated in 2019 and another $100,000 in 2020 after Twisted Pink received a satisfactory update on the project.

This research funding was matched to provide $400,000 towards the project.

$100,000 to support the following research: A Phase 2 Study of Palliative Radiation in Combination With Pembrolizumab in Subjects With Unresectable Metastatic Stage IV Breast Cancer: Twisted Pink

This trial was delayed due to COVID-19 and started enrolling patients in July 2021.

Dr. Yoannis Imbert -Fernandez, Ph.D., University of Louisville, James Graham Brown Cancer Center

$50,000 to support the following research: Targeting Breast Cancer Resistance to Palbociclib via Oncolytic Virotherapy.

A 2 million dollar grant was awarded to Dr. Yoannis Imbert- Fernandez by the National Institutes of Health. This would not have been possible without the support of Twisted Pink to her basic and translational research on metastatic breast cancer.

$150,000 to support the following research: New Therapeutic Targets for Patients with Existing Metastasis.

This research funding is being matched to provide $300,000 towards the project.

($190,000 direct from Twisted Pink)

In 2017 Twisted Pink was a founding member of the Metastatic Breast Cancer Research Collective. Together with Hope Scarves and The Cancer Couch Foundation we raised $600,000 and secured an anonymous 1:1 match for each dollar we raised for a total donation of $1.2 million. With these donations we supported two cutting edge research projects:

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center– Looking specifically at a new class of MBC drugs called CDK 4/6 inhibitors with the tools of DNA and RNA sequencing to understand and overcome resistance mechanisms.

Dana-Farber Cancer Center at Harvard University– Researchers there are working to create a “Resistance Atlas” for ER-positive metastatic breast cancer, which should help inform treatment decisions for individual patients and propel the development of new combination treatment strategies.

Twisted Pink serves as an advocate partner of The MBC Project. This project is providing access to an unprecedented database of genetic information from patients with metastatic breast cancer.

Twisted Pink continued funding ($120,000) to Dr. Yoannis Imbert Fernandez to continue her work with Targeting 6-Phosphofructo-2-Kinase To Increase the Efficacy of ER and CDK4/6 Inhibitors Against Metastatic Breast Cancer

$100,000 to UofL James Graham Brown Cancer Center in 2015