Rhonda Ryan, 57, was diagnosed with lobular breast cancer in 2019. Two years later, she was told her cancer had spread to her liver and was incurable. An experienced investment professional, Rhonda is now calling on her industry contacts to support our vital research, hoping to raise £1.8m over six years and make a real difference for the next generation of cancer patients.
Because there is a history of breast cancer in my family, I had been having annual mammograms for many years. Nothing was picked up until 2019 when, two weeks before my regular screening was due, I noticed a thickening in my breast. I had always expected breast cancer to feel like a lump and I had checked myself regularly, but this did not feel like a lump. The mammogram confirmed that something was not right and I was recalled for a biopsy. I was shocked to learn that the cancer had probably been growing for some years, undetectable to the mammograms, and that it had already spread to some of my lymph nodes. I learnt that my cancer - lobular breast cancer - is more difficult to detect than the more common ductal breast cancer, and consequently it is usually more advanced and difficult to treat by the time it is discovered.
I had a double mastectomy and reconstruction, followed by nine months of aggressive chemotherapy and radiotherapy. My treatment finished in April 2020, just as the UK entered lockdown because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
There followed a year of me thinking that I was now ‘cancer-free’, although I was naturally concerned about the cancer coming back, and I was on tamoxifen to reduce the chance of that happening. However, in the summer of 2021, we discovered purely by chance that the breast cancer cells were growing in my liver. I had experienced pain in my side, and because tamoxifen can lead to ovarian cysts, I was referred for an ultrasound. I was expecting to be told I had a treatable cyst, so it was a shock to learn that in fact I had metastatic breast cancer in my liver; the cancer cells had evaded the nine months of treatment, and had spread beyond the breast and lymph nodes – it turns out that lobular breast cancer also spreads more readily than ductal breast cancer.
‘Being told I had incurable cancer was utterly devastating’
At the time, I had two children still in secondary school, and to be told I had incurable cancer was utterly devastating. Statistics suggest cancer will affect one in two people, but it actually affects everyone associated with that patient. The impact of this disease on my children and husband has been horrendous. It is hard to see their fear that I may not be around for the future milestones in their lives, but I want to be there to see them graduate and to celebrate the milestones that most people take for granted. I am not an old person who has lived her entire life. I still want – and need – to be a mum who is present for her children.
We asked the consultant about my prognosis and were told that without treatment, I would have between three and nine months to live. With drugs, I was looking at between one and ten years, with huge uncertainties. After having had annual mammograms, checking myself regularly, enduring nine months of aggressive treatment and still taking tamoxifen, I felt I had done everything I could to make sure I would live for my children and husband; it was hard to believe I was in this position.
Further surgery was not an option, so I started a targeted cancer treatment, palbociclib, the clinical trials of which had been led by the ICR. To date, it has been the most effective drug in shrinking my tumours. But as in most cases, it eventually became ineffective against my cancer and regular scans showed that after 20 months the tumours were starting to grow again. It was time to try something different. I have since been on four different treatments, with chemotherapy ongoing.
I don’t ask about my prognosis anymore. A part of me doesn’t want to know, and I am not convinced anyone can accurately predict it, especially given the continuing development of new drugs, some of which have become available since I was first diagnosed. I like to hope that there are new developments around the corner that might help me, and my brilliant oncologist is open to clinical trials which gives me hope too.
‘Superheroes don’t wear capes, they wear lab coats’
Hope is everything to a cancer patient. Without it, life becomes very difficult, you have nothing. I have to believe that as long as my treatment continues to work, there will be another one available for me afterwards. I have to be hopeful that the scientists working in cancer research will find something new for me and for other patients.
I say that superheroes don’t wear capes, they wear lab coats. I know that, thanks to researchers who have developed the drugs that have kept me alive thus far, I have been able to see my daughter and son get their A-Level results, embark on their careers, and share some amazing holidays and milestones over the past four years. We wouldn’t have had those experiences without the vital work being done in cancer research.
.jpeg?sfvrsn=f91c67ee_1 "Rhonda with her family (credit: Rhonda Ryan)")
Knowing this and wanting to make a difference for future generations, we identified The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) as a world-class institution with an outstanding record of scientific achievement. As a first step, we decided to make a significant personal donation to the ICR to establish an endowed studentship fund to support and develop talented PhD students. This was our way of investing in education and discovery by training today’s and tomorrow’s cancer researchers.
‘Imagine the difference we could make if we all came together to fund cancer research’
But I realised that a much greater impact could be achieved if I garnered the support of my industry; what a difference that could make! Having worked in the finance industry for many years, specifically in alternatives (private equity, private debt, infrastructure investments), I could envisage the difference we could make to the lives of so many if we came together to fund cancer research. Everyone has a role to play: my amazing oncologist devotes his life to keeping his patients well and enabling them to live the best lives they can, scientists work hard to develop the treatments that help cancer patients, and companies, corporate foundations and individuals from the finance sector (and other industries) can provide the funding vital to medical research that improves lives. Funding that research seemed to me to be the very least our industry could do. So, with the ICR, I set up the Alternatives 2 Cancer fundraising initiative, to encourage individuals and corporate organisations within the Alternative Investment industry to raise a target of £1.8m to fund a breast cancer research team at the ICR.
We chose to focus on Professor Victoria Sanz-Moreno’s lab to fund her research into the development of precision cancer drugs. Professor Sanz-Moreno is an international expert in metastatic cancers including melanoma and breast cancer, and leads the ICR’s Cytoskeleton and Cancer Metastasis group, investigating the hallmarks and vulnerabilities in cancer cells that have spread elsewhere in the body, with the aim of improving treatment for patients with advanced breast cancer as well as other cancers. Understanding how and why breast cancer spreads is the key to improving the chance of long-term survival, as once cancer spreads from the original tumour to other parts of the body, it is often incurable, though potentially still treatable.
You can donate directly to the ICR Alternatives 2 Cancer initiative or contact Hannah Joyce in the ICR’s Philanthropy team if you feel you could help further in this mission.