Establishing an Inflammatory Breast Cancer Registry

Inflammatory breast carcinoma (IBC) is an extremely rare, aggressive form of breast carcinoma that disproportionately affects young women. Clinical features of IBC include warmth, redness, edema, skin dimpling and rapid enlargement; the hallmark pathologically is dermal lymphatic invasion. Minimal criteria necessary for a clinical diagnosis of IBC have been debated and relatively little is known about the epidemiology, pathogenesis and molecular characteristics of these very lethal tumors. This project, funded by a grant from the Department of Defense awarded to PHL, would develop a national registry of approximately 300 volunteers (aged 18 years or older) with IBC. Subjects will provide access to medical records, pathology records, slides, blocks and tissue (fixed and frozen) and x-rays and consent to an interview. Recruitment will be performed at collaborating institutions and through an IBC research foundation (Owen Johnson) that maintains a website and e-mail contact lists. The registry resources would be made available collaboratively to anyone in the breast cancer research community, based on merit as determined by a designated committee. Central aims of the study include determining whether clinically or pathologically defined IBC differs in clinical behavior or biologically, identifying markers in IBC that may provide useful information about the aggressive potential of breast cancers generally, and evaluation of tissue for mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) related sequences. The purpose of this IRB submission is to review the role of MES as a collaborating pathologist on this study. Enrollment is closed as of this time.