Dr. Love: Innovative Leader In Breast Cancer Research

The time has come for Dr. Susan Love to close up shop and move out of the Palisades. The pioneer breast cancer researcher, whose investigation into the causes of breast cancer, boosted by a recently awarded $1-million grant, is moving to larger digs in Santa Monica in March. ‘The ironic part is that in 1995, I relocated my research foundation from Santa Barbara to Pacific Palisades to be close to home,’ says Love, who has lived here for the past 25 years with her partner Dr. Helen Cooksey and their daughter Katie, now a sophomore at Swarthmore. So close, in fact, that Love has been commuting by bike to her office on Via de la Paz. ‘Now, we’ve been so successful we’ve outgrown our space.’ Celebrating her 60th birthday last week, Love retains the buoyancy of youth which accounts for her clear-eyed optimism in conquering breast cancer, tempered by 20 years of direct patient care, and for last dozen years a devotion to research. When in 1990 Love wrote her groundbreaking book ‘Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book,’ which offered women a complete guide to breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, the state of the art in breast cancer therapy was mastectomy. ‘I liken it to the way doctors 40 years ago routinely recommended a hysterectomy if a woman had an irregular Pap smear.’ Her frustration with the lack of progress and new ideas in breast cancer research propelled Love to devote her energy not only to educating women with breast cancer, but also to raising awareness and funds for more research. ‘Increased funding for breast cancer really began in 1991,’ Love explains. ‘It was a pivotal time for a couple of reasons. After AIDS had become political, we started wondering Where’s the political move for breast cancer? ‘I remember I was out touring the country on my book tour. I was in Salt Lake City in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, and frankly looking for a laugh. So I said Maybe we should all march topless to the White House (Bush senior was president), and to my surprise all these women shouted, When do we leave? A nationwide advocacy campaign and lobbying paid off in an hundredfold increase in federal funding from $3 million to $300 million. The second big step in funding came from Revlon, thanks to the dogged work of Lilly Tartikoff, who with Revlon CEO Ronald Perelman created the Revlon/UCLA Women’s Cancer Research program, and in 1994 launched the first Revlon Run/Walks for Women. Love believes that corporations’ reluctance to fund breast cancer research was dispelled with the success of Revlon. While there have been enormous increases in funding, Love regrets that ‘much of the money is not well spent. A lot is going to the same thing, and there is resistance to using women in studies. One researcher, who favors rats and mice, actually told me ‘But women are so messy.” Love set out to change the approach, and found herself swimming against the tide. ‘It’s unusual for a clinician to go back to research,’ she says. ‘It’s usually the other way around–from the bench to the bedside.’ Despite the steep learning curve, including how to write grants, Love has been successful in landing significant foundation money, particularly from the Avon Foundation that has been amenable to underwriting her studies on women. ‘Because Avon Cosmetics does no animal research–no rats, no mice–we could study the lining of the milk ducts, where all breast cancer starts,’ Love says Love believes that examining the ductile fluid will give researchers clues to identifying which women are at risk of developing breast cancer. In one study, Love is looking at how the breast works: hormone levels, cells, proteins, and their changes over time. A second study will try to explain why an early first pregnancy reduces the risk of breast cancer, and the most recent Avon grant will be used to test for risk. ‘We call it the Band-aid grant, which works in a similar way to a dip stick,’ Love says. ‘We really need a simple test that finds out which cells are pre-cancer.’ An adhesive strip containing five markers for risk is applied to the breast. You massage the breast to express some fluid and examine the color changes on the strip. ‘It won’t tell you if you have cancer; it will tell you that you are at higher risk.’ In the future, Love envisions injecting a low dose of chemo into the affected milk duct to eliminate pre-cancerous cells. All her energies are focused on her main objective: Moving from treating breast cancer to understanding breast cancer. ‘Every day women are being diagnosed and dying from breast cancer. We cure three-fourths of all breast cancer, but one-quarter of the women are still dying.’ ‘At some point we have to take a leap and test these new theories. I say to donors, we’re a high-risk fund. ‘I’ve found over my career there are two ways to get rid of disease,’ Love continues. ‘A slow way which is long-term research and a fast way, like putting a stent through an artery to reduce the risk of heart failure, while continuing to research prevention. You can save a lot of lives with the fast way, while you’re waiting for research.’ While Love and her team of four are moving to Santa Monica, where Susan will have a fifth-floor office with a view of the ocean, her ties to the Palisades remain. ‘We have a great group of women in the Palisades who have volunteered for many of our various studies. It really is a big sisterhood.’