by Dr. Victoria Seewaldt, M.D.
Volume 2/Number 1
|  | | Dr. Seewaldt and her daughter, Erin. | I am a breast cancer prevention researcher and the mother of a six-year-old daughter named Erin. It is hard to be both a mom and do research at the same time. But having a child really brings home the importance of what I do in the lab.
Breast cancer prevention research is something I do for my daughter. As a doctor I see first hand how much life and happiness breast cancer can rob from families. As a woman I know how much we all fear getting breast cancer and how when we do get breast cancer, we fear that the same thing will happen to our daughters.
I want my daughter, and all of our daughters, to grow up in a world where they do not have to fear getting breast cancer. I have hope that through research we can give our children a better world. It is this hope that keeps me going when times are difficult and it is this hope that causes me to celebrate when someone makes a new discovery.
I am a translational researcher. Translational researchers take scientific discoveries and use them to fight disease. Translational research is different from basic or clinical research. A basic scientist will study how yeast divides. A clinical scientist tests drugs by conducting clinical trials. It is the translational scientist that says: “This gene that is important in yeast, perhaps it is important for prostate or breast cancer.” Then the translational scientist decides how to use this knowledge to develop new drugs. Translational research gives power to ideas and brings hope. Translational scientists are the architects and engineers of science. They are the doers.
The best thing about being a translational scientist is that when I go home at the end of the day, I know that what I am studying will make a difference.
So how does this work?
I am interested in finding ways to prevent breast cancer. I run both a basic science lab and also see women in my clinic who are at high-risk for getting breast cancer. This allows me to look at breast cancer prevention as both a doctor and a scientist.
As a breast cancer doctor I share my patients’ frustration that we still do not have good ways to prevent breast cancer. I am hopeful because we are developing some pretty amazing new technology to identify which women are likely to develop breast cancer. But while this new technology holds a great deal of promise, I am concerned that our ability to determine breast cancer risk is rapidly outstripping our ability to develop breast cancer prevention. I share my patients’ worries that our daughters may face a world where they could be told that they are at risk for developing breast cancer but we don’t have prevention drugs to stop breast cancer from developing.
So what is the problem? Why is it so hard to develop new breast cancer prevention strategies?
I think that progress in breast cancer prevention is being held up because we don’t understand how breast cancer starts.  | | Members of the Seewaldt laboratory team: (back row) Jamie Slade, Greg Bean, Faye Burt, Robin Majoram, Josh Heffner, (front row) Michelle Troch, Michelle Bowie, Vicky Seewaldt, and Eric Dietze. Missing: Gordana Vlahovic and Vicky Scott. | Basically, if you don’t know what’s broken, how are you ever going to fix it?
Being a translational scientist is very exciting because it gives me the ability to listen to my patients, see first hand in the clinic what we don’t know, and then go back to the laboratory to find answers.
My laboratory studies how breast cancer might start. Currently we are studying how the body is able to eliminate cells that become damaged. Cells are normally damaged every day when they divide or when we are exposed to chemicals in our environment. While many cells get damaged, the majority of damaged cells don’t go on to become cancers. This is because the body has a lot of ways to get rid of damaged cells. Sometimes these mechanisms don’t work and damaged cells don’t get eliminated. This is how we think cancer starts. Understanding how the body eliminates damaged cells and how these mechanisms sometimes can fail is very important for developing new ways to prevent breast cancer.
We think that the body is able to eliminate damaged cells through signals that are generated at the base of the cell (through the basement membrane). The basement membrane is in many ways like the basement of the house. It tells the cell what end is up, what end is down, and gives the cell a “blue print” for where it is supposed to be. We think that the basement membrane is also important for getting rid of damaged cells. Currently my lab is studying how the basement membrane might eliminate damaged cells through several proteins that are also important for vitamin A-signaling. I think that this information is important for developing effective ways to prevent breast cancer and also to look at the very complex question of how the environment-- what we are exposed to, what we eat --may either promote or prevent breast cancer.
We have just started a new breast cancer prevention clinic. This clinic will allow us to take the next important step and test whether the discoveries we have made in the laboratory hold up in real women. If they do, we can then start using these discoveries to 1) figure out what prevention drugs might work best for particular a woman, and 2) develop means to rapidly test if a prevention drug is working.
This is a very exciting time to be a translational scientist. Instead of having to study one gene at a time, we can study thousands of genes. We can study how detoxifying proteins may interact with environmental exposure to carcinogens and whether different diets or interventions might make a difference. But it is the translational scientists that are going to have an interest in making sure that scientific discoveries don’t sit in the laboratory, and instead are used to fight disease. These are complex, hard problems to solve. But solving these problems is going to make a difference for all of our daughters.
So it is with hope that I do my work and thank everyone who has supported The V Foundation. You are the people who have allowed translational research to go forward and allow people like me to keep on asking questions and finding answers. I believe that with your help, we will find ways to prevent breast cancer, and that my patients will leave my office with hope for themselves and their daughters. | ..............................................................................................................................
Editor's Note: | Dr. Victoria Seewaldt is the first recipient of a Jimmy V Women’s Basketball Classic-funded research grant, awarded in conjunction with the 2002 Jimmy V Women’s Basketball Classic, held on November 24, 2002, in Raleigh. Dr. Seewaldt was originally awarded a V Scholar grant in 2000. The Foundation is privileged to assist her in her research by funding her again with this special award.
Dr. Seewaldt is an Assistant Professor of Medical Oncology and Transplantation at the Duke University Medical Center. She was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, N.Y., and is a graduate of Cornell University. She received her M.D. from the University of California at Davis.
She is an avid Duke women’s basketball fan and resides in Durham, N.C., with her husband Eric Dietze and daughter Erin Seewaldt-Dietze, age six. |
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My V Grant - Funded Researchers Tell Their Stories 
