[Debbie L.]

Hi Paula! I look forward to seeing you at SABCS, too.

In addition to the Project LEAD Advanced Topics sessions, each evening there will be the Mentor Sessions offered by Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation. The format of those meetings has been that each expert has a few minutes to highlight what interested them in that day's presentation, and then there is time for advocates to ask specific questions about what was presented that day. It is always emphasized that the questions should be on-topic (that day's presentations) and generic rather than personally-specific. Scholarship recipients are required to attend but it's open to the public and many advocates choose to attend, because there are always interesting things discussed. http://www.alamobreastcancer.org/pat...ntor-sessions/

The Advanced topics session will have Q&A but it will probably be mostly limited to questions and discussions about trial design, as that is the focus of the morning.

I am going to ask for some help from this list, too -- in a separate thread. NBCC has asked me to talk about the advocate perspective regarding trial design for adjuvant and neoadjuvant T-DM1 use.

As more and more of us (HER2listersisters) are attending SABCS each year, I wonder if we could consider all getting together, even just for a short coffee break or perhaps at lunch? There is an added value to face-to-face connections that is hard to pin down, but powerful. It's probably expensive to actually reserve a room for a meeting, but we could arrange to gather in that upstairs area overlooking the back, where it's usually fairly quiet, for example.

Debbie Laxague