Dr. Susan Love says enough with mere awareness -- let’s find a cure for breast cancer

October may be Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but Dr. Susan Love said Saturday that she’s had enough of it.

“We are stuck in awareness,” the esteemed breast cancer surgeon said as part of “Conversations on Beauty, Health & Wellness,” the daylong event sponsored by LA, Los Angeles Times Magazine.

But “breast cancer does not have to go on to another generation,” she told the crowd at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes. “We can be the generation that stops it.”

That will require a change in the way breast cancer research is conducted, she said. For too long, research has progressed without significant innovation. After all, 70% to 80% of women diagnosed with breast cancer do not have any known risk factors for the disease. “That means we have no clue what causes breast cancer,” she said.

Love is working to change that. The outspoken advocate launched her own research foundation that is recruiting “an army of women” willing to take part in breast cancer projects. Love hopes the effort will help scientists pinpoint the cause of the disease -- and provide a roadmap for how to eradicate it.

She also gave a brief update on the current state of breast cancer research, in which she described the importance of patients finding out what type of tumor they have.

“You need the treatments that match the kind of cancer that you have,” she said. “God forbid you’re getting chemo for a tumor that doesn’t respond to chemo.”

She also discussed the necessity of changing what she called “the neighborhood” in which breast cancer can thrive.

“Cancer cells don’t live in isolation,” she said. “They need to be in a neighborhood that’s egging them on.” In some cases, she said, the spread of cancer cells may be kept at bay by things like exercise and stress reduction, and the discontinuation of known aggravators like hormone replacement therapy.

-- Jessica Pauline Ogilvie / Special to the Los Angeles Times