A scientist, clinician and advocate walk into a conference center… perhaps you’ve heard this one before?

Tomorrow, the Dr. Susan Love Foundation for Breast Cancer Research will convene the 11th International Symposium of the Human Breast at the UCLA Meyer & Renee Luskin Conference Center & Hotel. Since 1999, the foundation has hosted this signature event every other year with the goal remaining the same: to challenge the way we think about breast cancer.

Over the past 24 years, the foundation has awarded 61 pilot grants ranging from $1,000 to $75,000 to the multidisciplinary teams formed at the symposia consisting of scientists, clinicians and advocates to explore aspects of the human breast. The awarded teams, and their innovative research projects, have resulted in over 100 publications.

In 2023, with the 40th anniversary of the foundation, the grant stakes have been raised with our largest pilot grant ever generously funded by Gilead Oncology. This grant will significantly help a research team created at the symposium to focus on triple negative breast cancer in Black women or women and men of African descent. Just imagining the innovation and change that will come from this grant is enough to trigger one of Dr. Love’s mega-watt smiles.