Janice Cowden: As people diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, we have a lot to say about dose optimization and treatment-related side effects

Janice Cowden shared a post on LinkedIn:

“As people diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, we have a lot to say about dose optimization and treatment-related side effects!

Anne Loeser, founder of the PCDI (Patient-Centered Dosing Initiative, therightdose.org) was passionate about changing the MTD paradigm, retire the “more is better” dogma in favor of a more personalized medicine approach to improve patients quality of life. Anne used her passion to encourage change in early phase clinical trial design to include a range of doses, offering patients maximum effectiveness with minimal toxicities.

Also, she hoped to motivate patients and Oncologists to have conversations about treatment goals and wishes, including optimal dosing based on each individual’s unique characteristics, and how to best mitigate treatment-related side effects.

Proud of our recently published paper in Clinical Trials on dose optimization.”

Source: Janice Cowden/LinkedIn

Janice Cowden is a former nurse, cancer patient and advocate. She was diagnosed with stage I triple-negative early-stage breast cancer in 2011; later, Janice was diagnosed with metastatic disease in 2016. She became a Living Beyond Breast Cancer Hear My Voice (HMV) Advocate in 2017 and continues to serve as a Helpline Volunteer. Janice works with several patient-founded and -led organizations including PCDI, GRASP, and Project Life MBC. As a trained peer support volunteer, she is founder of an international online peer support group for patients newly diagnosed with MBC. She serves on the Board of Directors for METAvivor Research and Support, Inc., and is an Advisory Board member for Project Life MBC. In 2022, she attended ASCO as a patient advocate scholarship recipient. In October 2022, she was invited to serve as a lead patient advocate, representing PCDI, on a research study with ASCO.