Today The Cure Alliance is proud to announce two new partnerships that advance both halves of our mission: curing and preventing chronic, debilitating, and fatal diseases.
First, we are supporting the research of Dr. Rumela Chakrabarti as she tests new ways to stop chemo and immunotherapy resistant Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) and moves her work into clinical trials. TNBC is an aggressive form of invasive breast cancer whose cells lack estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, and the HER2 protein, so they test “negative” on all three standard tests. That also means the targeted therapies that work against other breast cancers don’t work here. TNBC grows and spreads faster than most other invasive breast cancers, has a higher mortality rate, and leaves patients with fewer treatment options.
Dr. Chakrabarti is Associate Professor of Surgery and Co-Director of the Surgical Breast Cancer Research Group at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, where she is principal investigator of the Chakrabarti Lab.
Her lab studies why some breast cancers survive chemotherapy and immunotherapy, come back after treatment, and spread. Her team has identified new regulators that control how cancer cells behave. They are also investigating how immune cells shape the cancer stem cells that drive relapse and metastasis. They work with mouse tumor models, patient tissue samples, lab-grown “mini-tumors” (organoids), and single-cell genetic sequencing, all toward one goal: new combination therapies for TNBC that reduce the number of women who die from it.
This partnership is personal to me, as it is the first funding initiative for a disease I have personally battled. From the start of my association with The Cure Alliance, I hoped to encourage people not just to care about diseases that touched their own friends and family, but to care about all human suffering. I emphasized that sentiment when I wrote The Cure Alliance slogan: “Isn’t it time to cure your disease… and everyone else’s?” Then I recently met the remarkable Dr. Chakrabarti and thought, well, I’ve been leading The Cure Alliance for over a decade, cancer-free for longer. Maybe she is the one to halt TNBC.
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Second, The Cure Alliance has joined the Healthspan Action Coalition (HSAC), a global collaboration working to extend not just how long we live, but how long we live in good health. HSAC advances scientific innovation, public understanding, policy engagement, and practical action toward that goal. Bernard Siegel, J.D., is Executive Director of HSAC, and Dr. Camillo Ricordi, our founder, is Chief Science Officer.
The Cure Alliance joins HSAC’s prominent partners in Italy, including Fondazione Bicocca, Italian Sources for Healthspan and Saturnia Healthy Longevity, Palazzo Fiuggi, Columbus Clinic Center, Tennis & Friends, Women Economic Forum Italy, BrainCircle Italy, AEON Foundation, and our cousins, The Cure Alliance (Italy). Together, the partners will build a lasting platform for cooperation across longevity and aging science, regenerative medicine, preventive health, education, and public policy. We will connect investigators, clinicians, entrepreneurs, patient advocates, universities, foundations, women’s leadership networks, and public institutions in the United States, Italy, and beyond.
Support healthspan research at www.thecurealliance.org/donate
Shelley Z Ross
President, The Cure Alliance