e13099 Background: To inform strategic investment in metastatic breast cancer (MBC) research, it is essential to understand how funding is distributed across key scientific and patient-identified priority areas and to identify gaps where additional investment is needed. The MBC Alliance has shown that funding of research specifically devoted to metastasis (mets) has grown from 7-13% of all BC funding from 2014-2020. Here, we evaluate trends in the number of funded projects and total funding dollars supporting topics prioritized by people living with MBC. Methods: A collaborative effort between funders and patient advocates was undertaken to analyze topics in MBC research projects funded from 2014-2020. Individuals living with MBC were surveyed to prioritize topics of interest. Grant data were aggregated from the International Cancer Research Partnership database, the Health Research Alliance database, and MBCA member organizations, representing awards from 83 government and nonprofit funders worldwide. Relevant projects were identified from the database of 7,251 total projects either by research domains or by a predetermined set of keywords; then reviewed and confirmed manually. Results: Topics of highest priority included tumor microenvironment, quality of life (QOL), brain and leptomeningeal mets, treatment of rare MBC types (including triple-negative, inflammatory, and lobular), and pregnancy. Analysis of projects funded indicate variation in both the number of projects and total funding across priority topics. Tumor microenvironment comprised 33% of MBC projects. There were statistically significant increases in preclinical research in the topic areas of detection, diagnosis and prognosis, and in both development and clinical testing of systemic therapies. Brain and leptomeningeal mets comprised 6.8% of all MBC projects, and treatment of rare subtypes comprised 2.5%. QOL comprised 1.5% of all projects with 72% of those related to investigating the physical effects of diagnosis and treatment. Pregnancy was the smallest topic investigated, comprising only 0.25% of all projects, and these were mostly related to investigating the underlying biology (14/18). Conclusions: Of the total number of research projects related to MBC, 44% were in areas of greatest interest to people living with the disease. Continued collaboration between funders and scientists engaging with patient advocates is critical for translating these insights into targeted investment strategies. Despite recent growth in MBC research funding, the proportion of BC research dollars dedicated to MBC is still insufficient. Given the potential impact of disruptions to research funding, we remain concerned about the future of MBC research specifically, and the stability of the broader cancer research landscape.
Landsberger et al. (Thu,) studied this question.