Breast-cancer fighter sees animal research as a key weapon

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Jen Streicker has worked with lab research animals her entire adult life, first with dogs and monkeys in a Virginia lab and then with mice in North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

But she never expected that the testing of prospective breast cancer drugs on tumors in mice would become as personal as it became when she was diagnosed with the disease seven years ago. Nor did she think her experience would become a rallying point in support of seeking cures through animal research.

First diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, Streicker, 36, has undergone surgery, numerous rounds of chemotherapy and hormonal therapy, been placed on life support, lost her unborn twins, and is now living with cancer that has spread to her brain, liver and bones.

“I’ve always had a healthy respect for the animals we use," Streicker said. "I wish I could make everyone understand the importance of it. Not long ago, a diagnosis of breast cancer was a death sentence, but through this research it’s becoming more of a chronic disease that you can manage for a lot of women."

She had done work at Charles River Labs oncology center near Raleigh, N.C., with several of the drugs that have helped save her life, and she continues to work with those substances in combination with newer drugs to study their safety and effect, although much of her work schedule, limited by her illness, is spent training new technicians.

“My boss likes me to be in the building, he thinks it inspires other people to have that same passion for this work that I feel.”

Streicker went public with her story in a 2009 video created by the Foundation for Biomedical Research, a non-profit group backed by companies and universities to promote research using animals.

“It’s a little daunting to become the face of this, but a lot of scientists and even big pharmaceutical companies are afraid to come out and let people know how important and necessary the use of animals in research are -- and how labs are so different than what animal rights activists portray,” the researcher said.

“I’ve been to the other side of the mountain and back. These animals are treated much more humanely and with so much more compassion than many of the human patients in the clinics are treated," she said.

(Email Scripps Howard News Service science correspondent Lee Bowman at bowmanl(at)shns.com.)