About BCA
The mission of Breast Cancer Alliance is to improve survival rates and quality of life for those impacted by breast cancer through better prevention, early detection, treatment and cure. To promote these goals, we invest in innovative research, breast surgery fellowships, education, dignified regional support and screening for the underserved.
What does Breast Cancer Alliance Fund?
Breast Cancer Alliance raises money to provide four annual grants:
We invite clinical doctors and research scientists whose primary focus is breast cancer research to apply for either the Exceptional Project or Young Investigator research grants.
We invite Society of Surgical Oncology-accredited institutions in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to apply for breast surgical fellowship grants as long as their program has been in place for a minimum of two years.
We invite directors whose programs offer breast cancer services to underserved patients to apply for a Screening and Support Services Grant.
We do not solicit grant applications or restrict any breast cancer research topics from consideration.
“Because of BCA, we are closer to understanding why breast cancer recurs. We were able to kickstart our project to learn more about the environments that allow for cancer cells to thrive, and we are one step closer to combatting this, eliminating recurrence, and saving lives.”
— Dr. Marjan Rafat, Vanderbilt University
“Because of BCA, we were able to gain insight into the molecular mechanisms of dissemination used by early-stage breast cancer cells. Early-stage breast cancer cells are able to disseminate from the mammary epithelium, reach secondary organs and remain non-proliferative for several years in a dormancy state. Eventually, these dormant early-stage breast cancer cells will become reactive and form life-threatening metastases. Thus, characterization of early-spread breast cancer cells, which have the capacity to form future relapses, may help us to identify women with a higher risk for the disease to come back and to offer them newly designed therapies to prevent reactivation of early-spread breast cancer cells.”
— Dr. Maria Sosa, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
“Breast Cancer Alliance funding is creating opportunities for my lab to engage in higher-risk projects and to interact with a broad range of experts. The importance of this collaborative team in science cannot be overstated.”
— Dr. Nikhil Wagle, Dana Farber Cancer Institute
“Because of BCA, we were able to investigate our risky ideas to find new vulnerabilities and therapeutics for triple negative breast cancer, a journey full of surprises and expectations. Support from BCA not only provides financial support for our scientific projects, but more importantly, stimulates my research team, especially the next generation of young scientists, in faithfully facing conceptual and technical challenges during their studies on this funded project. We do hope that we can move our bench-side discoveries to human clinical trials and save lives.”
— Dr. Pengda Liu, UNC-Chapel Hill
“I have had the privilege to serve on the Scientific Review Board for Breast Cancer Alliance for the past 8 years. In reviewing proposals, I have been witness to some of the most creative and transformative new ideas in basic and translational breast cancer research. Many of these ideas are so new that the researchers do not have sufficient data to compete for larger grants from the National Cancer Institute, Komen Foundation or American Cancer Society. The support of Breast Cancer Alliance is absolutely crucial to get this work off the ground…The Breast Cancer Alliance is a vital catalyst, enabling some of the world’s greatest scientists to take creative new approaches to understand the basic biology of breast cancer and to translate these findings into new treatments.”
— Dr Anthony Koleske, Yale University