The NCAA is partnering with The V Foundation for Cancer Research and the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund to award a $100,000 research grant to the Cancer Therapy and Research Center at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.

Representatives from all three organizations were on hand today to make the presentation – and to celebrate the fact that the Women’s Final Four will be played 100 days from now at the Alamodome.

Rajeshwar Rao Tekmal, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Cancer Therapy and Research Center, received the grant to help fund development of a “master pill” that he hopes will delay resistance to hormone therapies or resensitize recurring resistant tumors – a new approach that allows anti-hormonal drugs to do their job once again. 

Tekmal plans to combine agents such as tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors that are often given to patients with early stages of breast cancer and those whose cancer has spread to other parts of the body after chemotherapy. The tumor’s growth is halted because these agents deprive the cancer of the estrogen it needs to grow. For women with certain types of breast cancer, taking tamoxifen after surgery for five years cuts in half the chances of the cancer coming back, according to the National Cancer Institute.

“Over time, however, the cancer becomes resistant to this approach and begins to grow,” Tekmal said. “About 50 percent of patients develop resistance to tamoxifen over three to five years. It appears the same is true also with aromatase inhibitors that deplete the supply of estrogen to tumor. The cancer will figure out another way to thrive in the absence of the estrogen.”

Tekmal’s approach to overcome this resistance is to combine drugs that create “moving targets” for the cancer to pursue. He hopes his approach can destroy the machinery the tumor creates in order to grow without the estrogen.

“We also hope to create a genetic profile capable of predicting how a treatment will work in a woman with breast cancer. It will enable physicians to choose the best treatment at the outset,” Tekmal said.

Tekmal will present his research this Saturday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, the largest scientific meeting in the world devoted to breast cancer research.

“I am trying to prevent the tragedy that Kay Yow faced – battling breast cancer that keeps coming back,” Tekmal said.

Sue Donohoe, NCAA vice president for Division I women’s basketball, said the NCAA actively seeks opportunities that will impact the host community for the Women’s Final Four.

“Being able to collaborate with The V Foundation for Cancer Research and the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund is a winning combination,” she said. “Cancer has touched all of our lives in some capacity, and it’s good to see that the research grant money will be going to continued efforts to help eradicate breast cancer.”