In this 1,2,3 – A,B,C section we update you with several interesting pieces of KTB news as well as event notifications.

ONE: The KTB is back in Indianapolis with back-to-back tissue collection events. The November 3, 2018 event at the Simon Cancer Center Woman’s Clinic was a wonderful success. It was great to see all of our staunchly supportive volunteers, and to welcome new donors as well as those who answered to call to return for their 5+ year repeat donation. We will hold another event in the spring. Mark your calendars for Saturday, April 13, 2019. Please spread the word; we particularly encourage women of racial and ethnic minority heritage to participate.

TWO: We love our interns! This school year finds us welcoming two amazing and talented Life Health Science Interns (LHSI), April Giron and Kamryn Benscoter. April is a junior studying Health Services Management and Medical Sociology and wants to work in the non-for profit side of healthcare. Her focus is in communications and minority outreach for the KTB; attending cultural festivals and posting on social media are just a few on her projects. Kamryn is a sophomore Chemistry major planning to attend medical school. She is also on the IUPUI women’s soccer team. She has been tasked with what we call the mammogram project, which entails requesting and uploading our donors’ mammograms. April and Kamryn join two of our past LHSI interns, Ashley Vode and Madison Cochran, whom we have been able to keep as part-time employees through a grant funded by IU Women’s Philanthropy. We would like to thank our interns for their hard work and dedication to the KTB!

THREE: Fall is Full of Festivals! The KTB was glad to be a part of two great festivals in October. We met many new faces and continued to inform the community about the KTB at the Latino Expo and the Taste the Difference Festival. The KTB needs more diversity represented in our tissue stores so that researchers can have what they need to be able to try to determine why certain ethnicities develop different types of breast cancer, as well as to discover why the breast cancer mortality rates are higher in the African American community.

A is for…Anniversary. Jill Henry, our Chief Operating Officer, celebrates 11 years with the KTB! As the COO, Jill is the manager of all the staff. She is the first point of contact for researchers who are requesting samples to provide them with data about the samples, she liases with the Komen Foundation in Dallas, and works alongside our Principal Investigator, Dr. Anna Maria Storniolo. Thank you Jill for your commitment!

B is for…Baltimore, MD. Our next off-site event will take place in the fall of 2019 (exact date TBD) in Baltimore, MD, in conjunction with our medical partner, Johns Hopkins, and the Susan G. Komen Maryland affiliate. Our site visit in September went well and we made some amazing connections. We accepted an opportunity to have a booth at Council President Jack Young’s 2018 Senior Symposium during our visit, met some wonderful seniors, and educated them about the KTB. We have established a Minority Recruitment Team that will assist us in recruitment and community engagement. One member of this team came to observe our November 3 event, and so did two of our Komen Maryland community partners. If you have family or friends in Baltimore, please let them know we’re coming.

C is for…Community – research community that is. The KTB wants and needs more researchers to know who we are. By requesting and using our valuable tissue samples in their research, investigators will have even more options for discovering new treatment options and ultimately uncovering cures for breast cancer. In an effort to increase our exposure and connect with researchers from across the world, the KTB has joined ResearchGate, on online community for academics, corporations, government agencies and the medical community to collaborate and discover research connections. This platform began when two researchers sought to make connecting with other researchers from across the globe easier and has since grown to over 15 million members from its inception in 2008. With a method to share publications and research about breast cancer, the KTB wants to let the world know what a valuable resource we have for normal controls with the samples from our tissue bank. ResearchGate will introduce the KTB to more collaborators and will result in more studies using our normal tissue samples. We invite you to click here to view our new white paper for yourself!