Arriving at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium

After a long flight from Memphis to San Antonio by way of Atlanta, I arrived at the San Antonio Convention Center near the Riverwalk. This year is shaping up to be an exciting program regarding breast cancer research, with about 8,000 attendees expected from around the world. On my flight, I explained to an unsuspecting traveler that he would be arriving in the southern Texas town at a very exciting time; that this large breast cancer conference is always held in San Antonio in December. Unlike other oncology conferences that may change location every year, SABCS originated here 34 years ago and has stayed ever since. The first presentations are scheduled for tomorrow morning, but there are a series of educational seminars that explore hot topics in treatment and biologic research, including sessions on reconstruction, biomarkers, new targeted pathways, treating early-stage disease and metastasis, as well as how to treat special populations - namely the very young and the elderly. Dr. Debu Tripathy, CURE's editor-in-chief and a practicing breast oncologist, will be blogging about how this year's presented research will translate to the clinical setting. (You can read his first post on what to expect this year here.) Our publisher, and two-time breast cancer survivor, Susan McClure, will be finding those patient advocates that SABCS is known for to report on how they are interpreting the information. I'll be doing a little bit of both. To get the full recap of SABCS, follow our blogs (tagged SABCS2011) and sign up for our breast cancer newsletter at curetoday.com/view/enews. You can also follow along with the discussion on our Facebook fan page and on Twitter using the hashtag #sabcs. Let us know what you'd like to hear about and if you have any questions for Dr. Debu. And if you're at SABCS blogging, advocating, or just soaking it all in, let us know. We'll start a blogroll and post them here for those who are watching from near and far.