last one in San Antonio...Hi from madubois63

[dlaxague]

My flight out isn't until 3pm. It feels different to sit here La Quinta's lobby without the hustle and bustle of thousands of symposium attendees coming and going.

This was my fifth consecutive year at SABCS. I am less starry-eyed than I was in those first few years but there is still an overwhelming awe that results from seeing the quality and number of minds that are working to find answers to breast cancer. It is simultaneously encouraging and frustrating. We know so much more about breast cancer than we did 5 years ago. Unfortunately, the overarching theme about what we have learned is that it is an incredibly complex topic, and that each answer gained raises many more questions, often without (yet) improving survival in the trenches. But still, this year included many incremental improvements and some promising new treatments.

I was glad to get to meet Brenda, Mary-Anne-from-Texas, and Chrisy. Joe, you were busy and so I intended to return later to express my thanks for what you do, in person. But time just flew by and the next thing I knew, they were dismantling the exhibit section. So please again accept my cyber-thanks for the existence of this wonderful resource.

There are many online resources for symposium updates and summaries, and of course the SABCS website itself is posting slides and posters more quickly than ever before. Here is CR magazine's page with blogs and podcasts by Musa Mayer and Kevin Begos:

http://www.crmagazine.org/archive/Pa...FromSABCS.aspx

And Susan Love's blogs are posted on several websites:

http://blog.dslrf.org/

http://www.bewell.com/Blog.aspx?blog...ookieSupport=1

I haven't had time to read them and see if they're the same so I included both URLs. (are there any English majors in the audience? I'm pretty sure Grammar Girl said you don't put and apostophre after the initials (URL) when you add an "s", but it looks wrong to me).

It's hard to express what it means to be in the middle of so much brilliance and dedication. While my own starry eyes have become a bit tarnished over time, it still affects me strongly. For example, I attended a lunchtime basic science presentation. I was barely able to follow even the most basic gist of the discussions among these young researchers as they discussed their 6 or 7 different studies on the topic. Kind of like listening to a foreign language that you know just enough of to understand what the topic is that is being discussed but not really to follow what is being said about it. But the energy of these brilliant, mostly-young minds is palpable and hope-generating.

One disappointment this year was that there were no updates on the adjuvant Herceptin trials. Not a single one that I saw (and I was looking).

Time to head to the airport. The first leg of my travels is a flight change in Denver where it appears to be minus eleven degrees. Brrrr.

Love,
Debbie Laxague