Mass General researcher Matt Rosen, PhD, is all too familiar with the devastating effects of a late breast cancer diagnosis, having lost a close friend to stage four breast cancer that went undiagnosed for a year—even after she found a lump during a self-exam.
Inspired and motivated by the memory of his friend, Christina Pfeifer-Mattig, Dr. Rosen is now working to develop a portable, inexpensive MRI-based screening tool that could improve early detection, address the limitations of x-ray mammography and make life-saving screenings more available to all.
Hear about Dr. Rosen’s story below and how he is hoping to reshape the way women are screened for breast cancer to reduce barriers to care.
What Inspired You to Pursue Breast Cancer Research?
Christina Pfeifer-Mattig was my very close childhood friend. At age 38, she felt a lump in her breast and went to her physician to discuss it. Her physician said, "Well, you're too young for a mammogram, so why don't you wait and come back in a year or so."
So, she did.
When she returned to her doctor's office, she found out that she had stage four breast cancer, also known as late-stage cancer, meaning it has spread to other parts of the body, making it more difficult to treat. But this was a failure of the system to diagnose a very important health concern of women.
This experience fueled my passion to explore whether we could leverage the low-cost brain imaging technology we've been developing with MRI over the past 20 years and apply it to significantly impact women's health.
How has the MGH Research Scholar Award Supported You in Pursuing this Research?
The support from the Kiyomi and Ed Baird MGH Research Scholar award ($100K per year in unrestricted funding for five years) has completely enabled this research work.
We have a very successful track record in my laboratory of developing all kinds of MRI hardware, artificial intelligence-based (AI) tools, and technology for brain imaging.
But we'd never done anything with breast imaging and the typical funding models, say through the NIH, would say, "Well, if these guys don't know anything about breast [cancer], we're not going to take that chance."
Thanks to the MGH Research Scholar award, we were able to acquire preliminary data scanning over 14 women to develop our algorithms and our approaches, and then actually get an NIH grant based on that preliminary data.
What Direction is Your Research Heading in Next?
It’s a very exciting moment for our lab. We've taken the last two years to really refine the technology and now we're just sort of trying to see what we’re able to study.
We just started enrolling subjects and took images of our first breast cancer patient last week.
We're very fortunate to be able to work with clinician scientists at Mass General Brigham to learn what a typical scan for cancer looks like, and what stages we can see things at.
There's still so much to learn, but we are making sure the process remains quick and comfortbale for the women coming in for treatment or imaging.
They visit our lab, undergo a 30- to 40-minute exam on our research scanner, and we’re gaining a tremendous amount of insight into what’s possible. These women are helping us refine our imaging techniques and we are incredibly grateful to them.
What Message Would You Like to Share in This Breast Cancer Awareness Month?
Women's health is important, and breast cancer awareness is a critical part of that.
I think we need to significantly challenge our assumptions about what the standard of care is for breast cancer screening.
For example, after a mammogram a patient may be told that she has dense breasts and that this makes mammograms more challenging to interpret. This can leave her wondering if there are other options for her annual imaging exam that might work better than mammography-based screening.
It’s crucial to communicate the limitations of the tools we have, while at the same time working to create new imaging tools for accurate screening.
One thing that is absolutely true is that regular breast screening is critical for women’s health and well-being, and we all want that to be as comfortable and accurate as possible.
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