METUPUK members have done amazing things in the last two years and continue to do so. Here is an update on the last two months:
Founder Jo Taylor was due to have been in Berlin to present a poster about #FightingMBCPlatitudes which was a joint effort with Eva Schumacher from a German breast cancer organisation. The Poster won first prize at #ESMOBerlin! We were thrilled. Jo was unable to attend in person because of health issues but delivered a keynote speech at the Greater Manchester Cancer Conference at the same time #GMCC24
A project which is coming to life soon is our Advocacy Programme for Patients. This will address the need for patients to support themselves in learning and advocating about their disease. We introduced the concept back in 2023 at our conference, and we intend to launch a pilot of the programme in Greater Manchester that can be developed further and rolled out across the UK. Planning is underway with our dedicated project team and we will soon be ready for launch. This work will complement the various strands of work we do already for metastatic breast cancer patients. METUPUK loves being able to support patients becoming advocates and we are pleased to have done so much in such a short time, all as unpaid volunteers.
We are also delighted to announce that the Darker Side of Pink Campaign, that made it to the glamourous location of Houses of Parliament last year, is now back travelling the UK. It is currently at Centre for Digital Innovation in Northallerton.
Our #MetastaticMay campaign launching the #CostOfLiving will be continuing through until the end of Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. We were delighted that our content travelled far and wide, with understanding of drug approvals and the complexity of funding becoming widespread among the MBC community and beyond.
Recently we have collaborated with Breast Cancer Now, challenging the NICE decision to provisionally reject Enhertu for women with HER2-low metastatic breast cancer on the grounds of cost effectiveness. We are also keeping the pressure by highlighting the newly adopted #SeverityModifier, which has classified metastatic breast cancer as a moderate severity disease despite being the largest single cause of death of women of working age (35-64). The moderate severity classification has slashed the amount regulators are allowed to spend on new and innovative drugs.
We believe Enhertu is the first of many new drugs that will be denied for metastatic breast cancer. We dispute a disease with kills over 11,500 patients every year and has a median survival of 2-5 years (depending on subtype) can ever be deemed moderate severity.
We will continue to keep the pressure on everyone to highlight the plight of women with MBC because no organisation will do this for us.
We have to create the change.