Developing Story: From CLEOPATRA to Life on Enhertu – HER2+ MBC with Dr. Erika Hamilton & Dr. Sarah Premji
wenty-five years ago, HER2-positive breast cancer meant a two-year death sentence. Today, patients are living 12+ years on first-line treatment—and some are being cured.
In this deep dive, host Victoria Goldberg (living with metastatic HER2+ cancer for 12 years) and leading oncologists Dr. Erika Hamilton and Dr. Sarah Premji unpack the drugs, trials, and real-world strategies transforming one of cancer's most feared diagnoses into its greatest success story.
From CLEOPATRA's game-changing 16-month survival boost to antibody-drug conjugates that deliver chemotherapy straight to cancer cells, learn how precision medicine is rewriting the rules—and what patients need to know about side effects, sequencing, and hope.
Say Their Name: Remembering Dr. Jill Tirabassi
"We come together fast over the same diagnosis, we become family, and then we lose people. When we do, we are going to say their names out loud, and we are going to tell you who they were."
In the first episode of Say Their Name, we gather to remember Dr. Jill Tirabassi—a physician, mother, athlete, and advocate who lived with metastatic breast cancer for four years. Hear from the team who knew her, and read Abigail Johnston's essay about a life that was so much more than disease.
Symptoms Spotlight: Chemo-Induced Nausea and Vomiting (CINV) with Abigail Johnston and Melanie Sisk
When nausea and vomiting is caused by a substance that you're taking like chemotherapy, your go-to remedies for addressing nausea and vomiting may not work as well. I had my bag of tricks that I would use, especially like during pregnancy—things I could smell or different pressure points—those kinds of things. But none of that worked when it came to chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.
Developing Story: What Biomarkers Tell Us with Dr. Neil Vasan
Your medical records are full of letters and numbers—BRCA, PIK3CA, ESR1, PD-L1—but what do they really mean? These are biomarkers, and cracking their code could change your treatment and your prognosis.
In this episode, Dr. Neil Vasan breaks down the difference between prognostic biomarkers (how aggressive your cancer is) and predictive biomarkers (which treatments will work for you). Learn which biomarkers matter most for metastatic breast cancer, how germline mutations like BRCA and PALB2 open the door to targeted therapies like PARP inhibitors, and why somatic mutations like PIK3CA and ESR1 are reshaping treatment options in real time.
Symptoms Spotlight: Ascites with Abigail Johnston and Melanie Sisk
Dr. Jill Tirabassi joins Abigail and Melanie to explain ascites — the fluid buildup in the abdomen that can occur with metastatic breast cancer. Speaking as both a physician and a patient who's experienced it firsthand, she covers the symptoms to watch for, treatment options like paracentesis, and why advocating for your own comfort matters. A candid, hopeful conversation about a daunting topic — including why ascites isn't always permanent, or even always caused by the cancer itself.
Thriving Together 2026: From Silent Voices to Hear My Voice - 20 Years of the LBBC’s MBC Conference
“This is a disease no one wants, but you meet the best people."
Twenty years ago, about 125 people gathered at a hotel outside Philadelphia for the first-ever conference just for those living with metastatic breast cancer, at a time when the community was rarely seen or heard. Today, it's a three-day national event drawing hundreds of attendees and a virtual audience.
In this episode, the host Victoria Goldberg sits down with three longtime Living Beyond Breast Cancer leaders: CEO Jean Sachs; Elyse Spatz Caplan, who ended her 14-year tenure with LBBC as the Director of Programs and Partnerships; and Catherine Ormerod, a retired Executive Vice President for Strategy and Mission. In a separate conversation, she speaks with Janine Guglielmino, LBBC's former Vice President of Mission Delivery, who was there for that very first conference in 2006.
Developing Story: Triple Negative MBC - Hard Truths, Real Hope with Dr Sarah Premji
Triple negative metastatic breast cancer has long been considered the hardest subtype to treat. That is changing and faster than most patients realize. Dr. Sarah Premji joins Victoria Goldberg to break down two landmark FDA approvals, the science behind antibody-drug conjugates, and what's coming next in the pipeline
Symptoms Spotlight: Bloood Clots with Abigail Johnston and Melanie Sisk
Blood clots are one of the most serious risks facing people with metastatic breast cancer, yet many patients don't learn about them until after a diagnosis has already happened. In this Symptom Spotlight, a registered nurse and an MBC patient sit down to talk through what you need to know, from understanding your personal risk factors to recognizing symptoms and knowing when to ask for help.
Developing Story: Your Cancer's DNA and the Trial Using It to Cure You with Dr. Pedram Razavi
What does it take to cure metastatic breast cancer? According to Dr. Pedram Razavi, it takes a blood test sensitive enough to find one cancer cell in a million, the courage to stop treatment when that signal disappears, and a trial designed to prove the paradigm wrong.
The HERizon-Breast Trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering is doing exactly that — and it's enrolling now.
This is one of the most science-rich episodes of Live from Stage 4 to date. We break down every term, every concept, and every implication in plain language so you don't need a medical degree to understand why this matters.
Symptoms Spotlight: Vaginal Dryness with Abigail Johnston and Melanie Sisk
"Nobody tells you about this part."
Vaginal dryness is one of the most common side effects of metastatic breast cancer treatment and one of the least talked about. In this episode, Abigail Johnston and Melanie speak candidly about what it is really like to navigate painful intimacy, shifting hormones, and the search for solutions while living with MBC
Developing Story: The Trial That Dares to Say Cure with Dr. Lior Braunstein
Dr. Lior Braunstein, radiation oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering, joins Victoria Goldberg and Ellen Landsberger to discuss the ARCHER trial — a groundbreaking study combining surgery and ablative radiation with standard HER2-targeted therapy in patients with oligometastatic HER2-positive breast cancer. The goal: eradicate every last cancer cell before resistance can emerge.
Developing Story: CureWise Goes Live - The AI Platform Built by Cancer Patients, for Cancer Patients
You have ten minutes with your oncologist. Ten minutes to ask the right questions, understand what's happening inside your body, and make decisions that could change everything. For most cancer patients, that's not enough time — and nobody taught you how to prepare.
CureWise was built to change that. On June 20th, the AI platform created by cancer patients Steve Brown and Lisa Booth officially launched. On this episode of Live From Stage 4, we sit down with Steve, Lisa, and real beta users Lynda and Todd Weatherby to find out what it actually does, how it works, and why it matters.
Developing Story: Beyond Camizestrant — The Evolving Landscape of ER+/HER2- MBC with Dr. Sarah Premji
The oral SERD era has arrived, and the treatment landscape for HR+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer is changing fast. Hosts Victoria Goldberg and Abigail Johnston sit down with Dr. Sarah Premji of Sarah Cannon to map out what has shifted beyond SERENA-6, from new FDA approvals and emerging mechanisms to real-world sequencing decisions and the latest trial data. If you are trying to make sense of a rapidly evolving algorithm, this episode is for you.
Symptoms Spotlight: Neutropenia with Abigail Johnston and Melanie Sisk
If you've ever gotten a blood draw before chemo and heard your nurse mention your ANC, this episode is for you. Neutropenia, a low white blood cell count, is one of the most common side effects of cancer treatment, and understanding it can make a real difference in how you advocate for yourself. Dr. Jill Tirabassi joins hosts Abigail Johnston and Melanie Sisk to break it all down, from what your numbers mean to what to do when they drop too low, and all three bring their own patient experiences to the table.
Developing Story: The Camizestrant Vote, Doctors Weigh In with Dr. Sarah Sammons & Dr. Neil Vasan
When the ODAC voted 6–3 against the camizestrant strategy, the headlines told you what happened — this episode tells you why. We're back for round two with Dr. Sarah Sammons, newly appointed Co-Leader of Breast Oncology at the University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Dr. Neil Vasan, Acting Chair of the ODAC and Director of Translational Research in Breast Cancer at NYU Langone Health, who sat in that room and cast one of the three yes votes. Alongside patient advocates Janice Cowden and Abigail Johnston, we break down the four FDA critiques that drove the vote, what the quality of life data showed and why regulators couldn't act on it, and what the FDA's new August 14th review deadline means for patients. Plus: why this science isn't going anywhere, and what ctDNA-guided treatment could look like in the very near future.
Symptom Spotlight: Melanie's Updates on Sleep Apnea and Constipation
Sometimes the symptoms you least expect turn out to be the most important ones to pay attention to. In this Symptom Spotlight update, Melanie shares two surprising diagnoses she received after recording our earlier episodes — obstructive sleep apnea and chronic constipation with diarrhea breakthrough — and how both were hiding in plain sight beneath what she assumed were normal cancer treatment side effects. If you're a metastatic cancer patient who's been brushing off fatigue, poor sleep, or digestive issues as "just part of treatment," this episode is for you.
Developing Story: The Camizestrant Vote — When Your Blood Test Knows Before Your Scan Does
Six MBC patient advocates join host Victoria Goldberg to break down the FDA advisory committee's vote on camizestrant and the SERENA-6 trial. The panel unpacks what the vote really means, whether the science of molecular progression is ready for clinical practice, and why patient advocates need a seat at the table before trials are designed.
Front Row Seat: Dr. Fatima Cardoso on Aiming Higher - Hope and the Road to a Cure
For decades, metastatic breast cancer meant one thing: managing the disease. But a new global report — and a bold new charter — say it's time to aim higher. Host Victoria Goldberg sits down with Dr. Fátima Cardoso of the ABC Global Alliance to examine 10 years of hard-won progress, confront the inequalities that have grown worse, and explore why, for the first time, the word cure is entering the conversation.
Front Row Seat: Can We Talk about the Cure? A Conversation with Dr. Eric Winer
For decades, stage IV meant managing the disease — not beating it. That story is beginning to change.
In this episode of Live from Stage IV, Victoria Goldberg sits down with Dr. Eric Winer — oncologist, director of the Yale Cancer Center, and former president of ASCO — to ask a question that once felt impossible: Can we cure metastatic breast cancer?
Dr. Winer walks through the landmark trials reshaping HER2-positive treatment, introduces the concept of "curative hope," and gets into what's hardest about ER-positive and triple-negative disease, cancer dormancy, the science of exercise, and bold new trial designs like SAFFO and HORIZON that are rewriting the playbook.
Thriving Together 2026: LBBC's MBC Conference Through Our Eyes
"You walk into a room full of people living with metastatic breast cancer and you just... break down. Not because it's sad — though it is — but because for the first time, you're not alone in it."
Twenty years in, LBBC's Thriving Together Conference is still doing what no other event in the MBC space does: bringing patients together not just to learn, but to find each other. In this episode, four MBC patients who attended the 2026 conference share what moved them, what the science is saying, and why they'll keep coming back.