
Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) researchers are developing advancements that bring hope to breast cancer survivors worldwide. Our discoveries lay the foundation for monumental changes in how the disease is detected, diagnosed, and treated.
This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we’re emphasizing those research efforts and the personal stories behind the science. You can explore more at the links below.
A Reflection on Decades of Progress
Benita Katzenellenbogen is recognized internationally for her work in breast cancer research. This month, she’s reflecting on progress and looking ahead to future advancements:
“I am pleased that many more people are now living long and full lives after a diagnosis of breast cancer. In the past 30 years, improvements in cancer diagnosis and innovative treatment have resulted in a 40% reduction in the breast cancer death rate, according to the National Cancer Institute. Breast cancer, however, still occurs too frequently. Cancer researchers want to extend the length of life and improve the quality of life for people with breast cancer and other cancers as well by developing better drugs and treatments that can arrest cancer early and are more precise and personalized.
While much progress has been made, there is still much more to do. The research of my team is focused on diagnosing and stopping breast cancer at an early stage so we can prevent cancer growth and metastasis. We are developing new cancer drugs and improved targeted combination treatments to provide long-lasting and meaningful benefits to breast cancer patients. We hope our research findings will enable improved outcomes for patients and advances toward a world without breast cancer. I am pleased to be a part of the Cancer Center at Illinois, which supports a community of researchers and oncologists dedicated to this common purpose of accelerating progress toward ending breast cancer.”
Benita Katzenellenbogen
Senior Advisor to the CCIL Director
Latest in Breast Cancer Research

Slowing or Stopping Tumor Growth
The limitations of standard breast cancer therapies inspired a team of researchers to pursue novel immunotherapies—treatments that engage the immune system, priming it to kill cancer cells. Their studies led them to identify a protein that can potentially stop or slow regulatory T cells from suppressing the immune system.

Overcoming Drug Resistance
A research team has discovered a potential new treatment option for drug-resistant breast cancer. Drug resistance poses a problem for many breast cancer patients by reducing the efficacy of many long-term treatments. Although treatment may kill off most cancer cells, a small percentage are resistant, enabling their survival, growth, and spread.
An Interview with Michael Oelze
Researcher Michael Oelze uses ultrasound imaging to determine whether a patient with advanced breast cancer is responding to neoadjuvant therapy—a treatment used to help shrink a tumor before the primary treatment, typically surgery.

What do you want the CCIL audience to know about your breast cancer research?
Our work in breast cancer is focused on identifying early response of patients with advanced breast cancer to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. In that regard we have a few separate projects. We are working with teams at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the Odette Cancer Centre to implement our quantitative ultrasound technologies on conventional clinical scanners. Using novel approaches to quantitative ultrasound, we are able to detect response at one to two weeks of chemotherapy. Similarly, we have recently begun working with a company, QT Imaging, LLC, to implement novel imaging techniques on their breast ultrasound tomography scanner. We will use this scanner to also quantify the ability to detect the early response of breast cancer patients to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. In a final project related to breast cancer, we are developing novel electronic radiological markers or clips. When patients undergo neoadjuvant chemotherapy, tumors, lesions, and metastatic lymph nodes are marked with radiological clips before chemotherapy. This is because the lesions or lymph nodes can normalize in appearance making surgical resection difficult. To overcome this, markers are placed in these tissues so that they can be localized later for surgery. However, in practice, approximately 50% of these markers are not visible to ultrasound making localization at bedside difficult. We are overcoming this by providing new electronic clips that when imaged emit a coded signal that is highly visible and provides a unique identifier code, i.e., ultrasound identification (USID).
Why is breast cancer research important to you?
Breast cancer should be important to everyone. I’ve had family members impacted by breast cancer. We have been fortunate to find collaborators who have an interest in solving diagnostic issues with breast cancer, and seeing the real-world impact has helped motivate me and those working with me to improve the tools we already have.
What is the best part of working in cancer research?
The best part of working in cancer research is working with highly motivated people who care about improving lives through their research. I cannot think of a better occupation than to experience the incredible satisfaction associated with discovering and engineering new things in research and then seeing that these things can positively impact society and people’s health.