This is a grant application from the Wilmington Medical Center to continue its work with the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast Program. The Medical Center is a 1000+ bed community teaching hospital which is a merger of three previously separate institutions in the City of Wilmington. This merger has made it possible to develop centralized radiotherapy and medical oncology services. This resource serves as a referral center for the State of Delaware with a total of 2300 new cancer patients per year. The Medical Center has been a member of NSABP since 1972. This has been a productive relationship with mutually beneficial results for both. Funds are needed to continue follow-up of 106 patients still being followed who have been put on protocol since 1972 as well as making it possible to enter new patients on current and new protocols as they are developed. The participants include surgeons, internists radiation therapists and pathologists with significant help from nursing, social workers and rehabilitation experts as well as the local chapter of the American Cancer Society. The NSABP program helps assure patients in Delaware that the care they are receiving is at the current state of the art and at the same time makes it possible to add patient data from here to improve understanding of breast cancer so that current adjuvant programs will continue to improve survival significantly over the next five years. The present application seeks funding to: a. permit continued patient accrual in on-going and newly developed protocols; b. continue follow-up of patients entered into all NSABP protocols including those which have terminated accruals; c. collect appropriate biological material and information relevant to such protocols; d. enhance the multidisciplinary approach of this institution in clinical trials; e. contribute to the scientific development of new protocols to advance care of breast cancer.
