The Baby Time Study (POSITIVE Trial)
Pregnancy after breast cancer: help us make it happen!
Loss of fertility is one of the most important issues facing young women or those assigned as female at birth. That’s why we want to do something about it. But we need you.
70% of women with breast cancer are recommended hormone therapy for up to 10 years following active treatment. For these women, the very same treatments that reduce the risk of a recurrence are contraindicated with pregnancy. This means a young woman who is diagnosed at age 30 could be 40 by the time she can safely try to start having a family.
Rethink Breast Cancer is asking you to help fund the international Baby Time (POSITIVE) clinical trial in Canada to provide answers for future generations of young women who wish to interrupt their endocrine therapy to try to have a baby and evaluate the safety of doing so.
Why we need the Baby Time Study
More than 60 breast cancer centres in 20 countries around the world are participating in the Baby Time study. Rethink Breast Cancer is committed to raising $100,000+ over the next 4 years to run the Canadian research arm of this study.
We can’t do the Baby Time Study without your help!
We need to raise $100,000 so that breast cancer centres across Canada can continue enrolling and studying patients. It costs approximately $3,000 for each woman to participate in the trial.
The money raised covers:
- recruitment and enrollment
- nursing staff costs
- data collection, analysis and reporting
- personalized care by dedicated medical team
- coordination of data with all participating centres
- follow up of each participant for up to 10 years*
- providing the Canadian data to the international centre
Each woman will be guided through taking a break from their endocrine therapy (3 months), attempting pregnancy (up to 2 years) and then monitored (up to 10 years) to track possible recurrence of breast cancer.
How to participate in the Baby Time Study
If you would like to participate in the Baby Time study in Canada please speak with your oncologist.
The criteria to participate is pre-menopausal women with:
• Hormone-sensitive early breast cancer
• Endocrine therapy for 18 to 30 months
• 42 years of age or younger at enrolment
• Wish to interrupt endocrine therapy to attempt pregnancy
Baby Time Trial Sites in Canada
Sunnybrooke Odette Cancer Centre in Toronto, Ontario
Qualified Investigator: Dr. Ellen Warner
Primary Clinical Research Associate: Ms. Debra Burns
Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Ontario
Qualified Investigator: Dr. Christine Elser
PCRA: Ms. Billie Lu
Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, Quebec
Qualified Investigator: Dr. Michel Pavic
PCRA: Ms. Anick Champoux
CHUM – Hotel Dieu du Montreal in Montreal, Quebec
Qualified Investigator: Dr. Andre Robidoux
PCRA: Ms. Ana Lydia Tkalec
Tom Baker Cancer Centre in Calgary, Alberta
Qualified Investigator: Dr. Marc Webster
PCRA: Ms. Marny Yar
BCCA – Vancouver Cancer Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia
Qualified Investigator: Dr. Karen Gelmon
PCRA: Ms. Cheryl Carrasco
CHA-Hopital Du St-Sacrement in Quebec City, Quebec
Qualified Investigator: Dr. Christine Desbiens
PCRA: Ms. Isabelle Ouellet
If you fit the criteria and live within an accessible distance to one of the trial sites:
Please contact support@rethinkbreastcancer.com to be connected.
The Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG) is a cancer clinical trials cooperative group that conducts phase I-III trials testing anti-cancer and supportive therapies across Canada and internationally. The CCTG’s Central Office is located at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Meet Baby Time Study Participants: Janelle, Joy, and Steph
Janelle was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 29. She was prescribed Tamoxifen for five years which would mean she would be 36 when she finished and she felt that was too late for her to start a family. So, she found an oncologist who was sympathetic and agreed to guide her in pausing her endocrine therapy to try to have a baby. She said, “I talked to a couple different oncologists [and] other women with breast cancer. I went online and there didn’t really seem to be any information as to how safe it was or what coming off Tamoxifen [would do] to the course of [my] treatment so it was really a leap of faith just to come off it and hope for the best.” She went off Tamoxifen after three years and it took her four months to get pregnant. She now has a beautiful baby girl! Janelle said “I look at my daughter Zara I feel so lucky, so blessed to have her and she’s definitely…she’s definitely worth the risk.
Joy is 34 years old. About a year after she got married she discovered she was pregnant. During this time she also found a lump in her breast which turned out to be breast cancer. Unfortunately, she lost the baby shortly after her diagnosis. Knowing how much her and her partner wanted to have children she pushed to meet with a fertility specialist to do egg retrieval and embryo freezing. Unfortunately, after someone offered to be a surrogate for her, they discovered that their embryos had not survived which means that now Joy’s only options for having a family are to take a break from her endocrine therapy to have a baby herself, adopt, or wait another five years, when she’s close to 40 years old, to try and get pregnant despite a history of miscarriages in her family.
Steph was diagnosed when she was 28 years old. She had been married for nearly a year when she found out and despite dreams of starting a family together her and her husband decided against her doing any fertility preservation because there just wasn’t really enough time between surgery and chemotherapy. “It was just going to be really tight to try to preserve the embryos…and I also just didn’t feel comfortable with all the kind of hormones that you have to inject yourself with as I have hormone positive cancer.” Steph shares, “I sometimes wonder if I made the right decision but I don’t have any regrets because I know that in that moment that’s what I had to do.” Steph really hopes to be considered as a participant in the Baby Time trial.
Big thanks
To Nate + Alibi Entertainment Inc, Imprint Music, Janelle, Joy, and Steph for sharing their stories with us and with the world!
Big Time Baby Time study Supporters: Debra Hickman, Natasha Sapra Alexandra El-Asfahani