The promise of mouse models of human breast cancer drew nearly 400 scientists from around the world to Sacramento for the 24th Congress of the International Association for Breast Cancer Research.

The congress, held Nov. 1–5 at the Sacramento Convention Center, was hosted by UC Davis Cancer Center and sponsored by the National Cancer Institute's Mouse Models of Human Cancers Consortium and Specialized Programs of Research Excellence, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Women's Health, and the California Breast Cancer Research Program.

Robert D. Cardiff, professor of pathology at UC Davis School of Medicine and Medical Center, served as congress director. Regarded as one of the world's foremost mouse pathologists, Cardiff saw the meeting as an opportunity for leaders from industry, government, science and the breast cancer advocacy movement to explore collaborative new ways to better deliver research discoveries to breast cancer patients.

"Our understanding of these mouse models has reached the point that they should be rapidly deployed to help alleviate human suffering," he argues.

The Sacramento meeting drew extensive local, national and international media attention. At the first of two press conferences, Cardiff and William J. Muller of McGill University in Montreal reported reversing breast cancer in laboratory mice by blocking genetic switches that govern the disease. University of Pennsylvania researchers reported on a novel mouse model of human breast cancer engineered to enable scientists to turn oncogenes on or off at will, using a triggering agent. And investigators from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center in Ann Arbor released the news that they had successfully grown breast cancer tissue from both human and mouse mammary stem cells, suggesting the stem cells may be a factor in breast cancer recurrences — and an important new target for breast cancer therapy. Media from Canada to China, Australia to Iraq, reported on the studies.

A second press conference addressed intellectual property rights issues that some scientists say create barriers to use of genetically engineered mice in breast cancer research. An Associated Press story on the controversy resulted in articles in major newspapers throughout California, in addition to coverage by United Press International, Agence France Presse and the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

All told, news from the conference was distributed to an estimated audience of more than 12 million through 54 print and wire service articles, more than 43 broadcast airings and reports posted on more than a dozen Internet media outlets.

Founded in the mid 1950s, the International Association for Breast Cancer Research is an international community of scientists focused on the important issues in modern breast cancer research. The Sacramento meeting was the organization's first devoted to preclinical models of human breast cancer research.