Kathy Miller

Kathy Miller has been fascinated by what she calls the "power of cancer" since she was a second-year medical student. "My laboratory mentor took me on rounds and to his clinic. In no time, I was hooked," she recalls in an interview with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (www.bcrfcure.org). "I was struck by the impact of breast cancer on patients' lives. I discovered that I enjoyed taking care of the women with breast cancer, whether the news called for laughter or tears. And I was determined to focus my research on decreasing the need for tears."

Miller is now an internationally known expert on breast cancer. An associate professor and Sheila D. Ward Scholar in the Department of Medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine and associate director for clinical research at the IU Simon Cancer Center, her skill was world news in 1999, when she diagnosed and treated Dr. Jerri Nielsen, a physician at an American base in the South Pole who discovered a lump in her breast but could not be evacuated for treatment because of the harsh polar winter. Miller treated Nielsen, primarily through a videoconferencing system, until weather conditions allowed Nielsen to be transported from the South Pole to continue her treatment at the IU Cancer Center.

In early 2008, Miller's research made big news again, with the publication of a study in The New England Journal of Medicine reporting significant results in prolonging the survival of women with advanced breast cancer. In a clinical trial involving 722 women with metastatic disease, Miller and colleagues in the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group found that using Avastin (bevacizumab), a drug which stunts a tumor's growth by stopping its blood supply, along with the standard chemotherapy drug Taxol (paclitaxel), led to the largest improvement in "progression-free survival" reported to date for women with advanced breast cancer.

Treatment with Taxol and Avastin (as compared to Taxol alone) nearly doubled the time between the initiation of chemotherapy and progression of the breast cancer tumors. For patients receiving both drugs, the period of time without seeing their cancer grow went from 5.9 months to 11.8 months.

"This study not only achieved the longest progression-free survival in advanced disease," says Miller, "but the therapy achieved that improvement without adding the day-to-day treatment burden and with only minor increases in toxicity."

Now Miller is studying the use of Avastin in initial treatment of breast cancer, with the hope that it may prevent or decrease the chance of recurrence. "Research clearly tells us that breast cancer isn't one disease. We need to find more cures, with fewer side effects," Miller told the BCRF. "The pace of progress has never been quicker and is never quick enough."