TRANSCRIPT: Q & A WITH DR SAM OAKES
Could you tell me what your name is & what research grant do you have from NBCF?
Dr Oakes: My name is Samantha Oakes & I have a National Breast Cancer Foundation
Early Fellowship
What made you decide to focus your research on breast cancer?
Dr Oakes: I am fascinated by the human body, and I’m fascinated by disease, but my Aunty
died of breast cancer when I was a very little girl and so I’ve always wanted to stop women
from dying from breast cancer.
Can you tell us in layman's terms what your research is about?
Dr Oakes: The focus of my research is to understand the ways in which cancer cells learn
how to survive in the body. Grow and invade into distant organs. If I work out ways in which I
can switch those cancer cells off. I can work out ways of stopping the cancer from spreading
and hopefully curing the patient.
When do you expect results from your research and how do you think it will help
people with breast cancer.
Dr Oakes: So my research is basic research. I’m working out the ways in which cancer cells
learn how to survive. We make incremental discoveries all the time and hopefully those
incremental discoveries will lead to ultimate wonderful outcomes for patients suffering breast
cancer. For example some of the work that I have been funded by National Breast Cancer
Foundation in my training fellowship is now translated in a clinical trial for patients with
breast cancer. So the work I’m doing now I hope will make a real difference in the next 5 in
the next 10 years, of enabling breast cancer patients to survive long-term & essentially die of
old age.
What do you think is the biggest challenge facing you as someone researching breast
cancer?
Dr Oakes: The biggest challenge facing me as a breast cancer researcher is learning the
many ways breast cancer cells learn how to survive in the body and spread to distant
organs. Breast cancer’s not just one disease, like all cancers it is actually multiple diseases.
So understanding the ways in which we can kill cancer cells for a wide-range of patients is
the real challenge.
What do people ask you when you tell them you’re a scientist researching breast
cancer?
Dr Oakes: The first thing people do when I tell them I’m a scientist researching breast cancer
is they saw WOW. What a great job. and then they ask me are you making any progress?
And I have to tell them we make discoveries all the time. Little incremental discoveries will
make a difference in at least one person’s life in the life-time of myself. So I hope that by the
time that I end my career if I have at least saved one patient. I’ve lived a good life.
Have you experienced research direction changing significantly during the course of
a project because of your findings
Dr Oakes: Yes. So I have experienced change in my research over the course of my
projects many times. Scientists tend to follow their noses, researchers investigating
diseases. Sometimes we discover something that’s unexpected and we have to chase that
down a different path and that certainly will be the case with my research. The research I
have been doing at the moment has been trying to understand the ways cells survive in the
body. But its led me to understand how cells metastasis and spread to the rest of the body.
And that’s really where we’re going to make a difference for treatment of patients suffering
breast cancer.
To date what’s been your biggest research breakthrough or achievement?
Dr Oakes: One of my biggest discoveries was learning that a therapy that could be used for
patients suffering blood borne cancers, that is leukemia and lymphoma can be used to treat
breast cancer patients. It can be used to sensitise them to chemotherapy that they may not
ordinarily respond to and that was a pretty big breakthrough, and it’s led me to be funded by
the National Breast Cancer Foundation on an Early Career Fellowship to continue that work.
How important is NBCF funding to achieving your research goals?
Dr Oakes: The funding that NBCF provides researchers in Australia is absolutely crucial.
There’s just not enough money that the government provides researchers in this country to
go around for all the fantastic researchers we have here. National Breast Cancer Foundation
provides not only important funding for project grants, but also provides funding for
innovative research, that might change the course of treatment for patients suffering breast
cancer. And also importantly they fund early career researchers like myself to start their
independent research career. To be able to make a difference in the treatment of patients
suffering breast cancer.
Could you do what you’re doing without funding from NBCF?
Dr Oakes: I’ve been funded from the National Breast Cancer Foundation since 2008 on two
major fellowships and I’ve also had funding on projects. Without the National Breast Cancer
Foundation I may not be standing here today as a medical researcher and a researcher
making a difference for patients suffering breast cancer.
To what extent can more funding accelerate your specific research goals?
Dr Oakes: Funding is absolutely crucial for us to conduct experiments in the laboratory.
For us to do the work that we need to do. For us to employ brilliant people that are able to
help us make those really fantastic outcomes for breast cancer patients. Without funding we
wouldn’t be here we wouldn’t be able to make these incredible discoveries.
What do you think has been the biggest breakthrough in breast cancer to date?
Dr Oakes: The biggest breakthrough in breast cancer to date is really challenging. Look I
think you cannot go past the discovery of tamoxifen and the benefits that tamoxifen has
given to patients who suffer oestrogen receptor positive breast cancer. That’s about 70-80%,
so 7 or 8 out of ten patients will benefit from tamoxifen therapy because they’ve got an
oestrogen receptor positive disease. The trick now is to understand how we can treat those
20-30% of patients that don’t express oestrogen and don’t respond to hormone therapy.
Do you believe we’re on our way to seeing zero deaths from breast cancer by 2030?
Dr Oakes: I sincerely hope that we see zero deaths by 2030. But we’ve got a long way to
go. Breast cancer is a very complex disease like many other cancers. It’s not just one
disease its multiple diseases. So without National Breast Cancer funding we just simply
wouldn’t be able to achieve that. We need more funding to try and achieve that goal.