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What Does The Money Go To And What Has It Done?

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Invasive Micropapillary Carcinoma of the Breast (Credit: Ed Uthman/Flickr)

race-to-1-billionToday, thanks to breakthroughs in cancer research, more and more people are becoming cancer survivors rather than cancer victims. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 12 million cancer survivors in the U.S. today. Every dollar we can raise through these stamps to fight breast cancer will help save lives."

Seventy percent of the research funds generated by the stamp are directed to research programs at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The remaining 30 percent of the research funds are directed to the Department of Defense breast cancer research program.

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute Report to Congress: Use of Funds Received for Semipostal Stamp for Breast Cancer Research Fiscal Year 2013 - March 2014

Ongoing Breast Cancer Programs
In fiscal year 2013, the Breast Cancer Stamp Fund provided funding for two programs supporting breast cancer research projects and initiatives. The first is the Trans-NCI Breast Pre- Malignancy Program which represents a comprehensive program in breast cancer pre- malignancy research that covers the characterization and imaging of breast cancer stem cells, the biology of breast pre-malignancy, molecular epidemiology of mammographic density, strategies to improve accuracy of mammography interpretation, the evaluation of decision-making approaches used by women recruited for chemoprevention trials, molecular target identification (biomarkers), imaging, and translational research. Developing a better understanding of how cancers originate and evolve is critical to advancing prevention, screening, diagnosis, and treatment.

The Trans-NCI Breast Pre-Malignancy Program consists of both intramural research – conducted by NCI researchers located on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, and an off-campus site in Frederick, Maryland – as well as extramural research programs, which support research under way in universities, medical schools, hospitals, and research institutions across the country. The program provides an opportunity to create a collaborative and integrated scientific community across NCI divisions and centers and to synergistically reach new discoveries and interventions. Funding for this program totaled nearly $1.2 million for fiscal year 2013.

The second program receiving funding from the Breast Cancer Stamp Fund for breast cancer research is NCI's intramural research program. Breast cancer research projects within the NCI's intramural program received a total of $156,513 in funding from the Breast Cancer Stamp Fund in fiscal year 2013.

In fiscal year 2013, three ongoing research projects utilized the Breast Cancer Stamp Fund as well as one fiscal year 2014 to-be-published research initiative, which are highlighted below:

1) The Biology of Estrogen Receptor-Negative Breast Cancer in Various Racial and Ethnic Groups
2) The Breast Cancer Metabolomics Project
3) Linked Registry Study of Maternal Pregnancy Factors and Maternal Breast Cancer Risk
4) To-be-published: Molecular Characterization of Screen-Detected Lesions

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