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Research and resources to save lives

Medicine

Know Your History.
Save Your Future.

Our Mission Is To Summit The Steepest Challenges In Gynecologic Cancer.

By this we mean to tackle the hardest problems in gynecologic cancer today. As science progresses and we evolve and solve these challenges, our focus will shift to the new steepest challenges until gynecologic cancers are preventable and curable for every woman.

Where We’re Pushing Higher

The three steepest challenges we are focusing on now:

Ovarian Cancer

Prevention & Early Detection

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Endometrial Cancers

Advanced & Aggressive Subtypes

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Health Equity

In Gynecologic Cancer

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Current Research We’ve Funded

The Any Mountain project is dedicated to funding research addressing the steepest challenges in Gynecologic Cancer. This research is being conducted by an incredible team of gynecologic oncology leaders from around the country we call the Expedition Team.

See the Research

Earlier Awareness

Expanding Prevention and Detection of Ovarian Cancer

Ovarian cancer remains one of the deadliest of cancers affecting women. With no reliable screening or early detection test, most women with ovarian cancer are diagnosed with advanced stage metastatic cancer.

Despite remarkable advances in treatment, the majority of women with advanced stage ovarian cancer will ultimately die of their disease.

Early stage ovarian cancer can be cured. Women with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome (HBOC) due to mutations in the BRCA 1 & 2 genes have dramatically elevated risk for ovarian cancer. Identification of these individuals through widespread and accessible genetic testing allows women to undergo proven risk reduction interventions. Innovative surgical strategies will lead to improved cancer prevention with fewer long term effects on overall health and survivorship. Innovative research strategies are needed to develop effective screening and early detection tests

Innovative Treatment

Confronting the Rise of Aggressive Endometrial Cancer

Endometrial cancer remains the most common gynecologic cancer with over 67,000 women expected to receive a diagnosis in 2024. Over the past decade, endometrial cancer incidence rates have continued to steadily rise by about 1% per year in White women and by a startling 2% to 3% per year in women of all other racial/ethnic groups.

Uterine cancer is one of the few cancers with increasing mortality; since the mid-2000s the death rate has risen by 1.7% per year.

The face of endometrial cancer has changed over time with aggressive histologies and advanced stage disease both on the rise. Deaths from endometrial cancer are expected to eclipse those from ovarian cancer in 2024. Despite these startling statistics, endometrial cancer remains an under investigated and underfunded disease.

Lack of awareness of typical uterine cancer symptoms can delay women from seeking care when symptoms present. Other factors, such as negative healthcare experiences, embarrassment, stigma, and lack of trust, time, and resources, also cause women to delay seeking care. These barriers result in delayed diagnoses, delayed treatment and worse outcomes.

Urgent Action. Better Outcomes

Any Mountain believes that URGENT ACTION is necessary to reduce endometrial cancer rates and improve treatment and survival outcomes.

We aim to:

Inform women about uterine cancer and its symptoms.

Empower women with endometrial cancer with the resources they need to obtain expert gynecologic cancer care.

Fund Innovative Research to better understand the biology of uterine cancer with a particular focus on high grade and aggressive histologies.

Support Research to understand the drivers of uterine cancer survival disparities and to ensure that clinical trials recruit racially and ethnically diverse patient populations.

Systemic Change

Improving Health Equity in Gynecologic Cancer

Racial inequality is deeply embedded in the field of medicine. While race has no intrinsic biological basis, it functions as an inexact proxy for a constellation of factors (socio/economic, cultural, & genetic) in our race conscious society.

Racism is the social stratification and unequal allocation of opportunity & resources on the basis of the social construct of race/ethnicity. Racism was woven into the history of this country and permeates all of our institutions, including healthcare, today.

Historical racist atrocities in women’s health are too many to enumerate:

  • Forced sterilization of women of color
  • Increased hysterectomy rates of black women
  • Obstetrical tools tested without anesthesia
  • Pharmaceutical experimentation with no consent
  • And more, and more, and more…

Confronting Inequities in Women’s Care

Today, we face wide sweeping inferior health outcomes for women of color, combined with a profound mistrust of health care systems by communities of color.

Women of color have higher rates of developing and dying from cancer. Increased exposure to cancer risk factors leads to disproportionate burden of disease with a greater likelihood of having the cancer diagnosed at a later stage and higher rates of surgical complications from cancer surgeries. Women of color are disproportionately treated by physicians at lower-volume hospitals, have higher rates of mortality after cancer surgery, and lower enrollment in clinical research trials.

Here are a few examples in gynecologic cancer:

Endometrial Cancer

Black women with Endometrial Cancer have an overall 55% higher 5-year mortality risk than white women (Cote, 2015).

Ovarian Cancer

The 5-year survival for Ovarian Cancer has increased from 33% to 48% among White women but decreased from 44% to 41% in Black women over time (NIH).

Cervical Cancer

Despite being both preventable and curable, Cervical Cancer disproportionately impacts lower income women in the US is a devastating global killer in low resource countries.

If we end racism in women’s cancer care, we will save a tremendous number of lives.

My love you were with me, right by my side.

Acting really tough, trying hard not to cry.

You said to be strong, we’ll fight this head on.
Take a leap of faith, and the journey’s begun.

Any Mountain Expedition Team

Dr. Elizabeth Swisher

Professor Division of Gynecologic Oncology, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology | UW Medicine, Deputy Director, Fred Hutch / UW / Seattle Children’s Cancer Consortium, Torkelson Family Endowed Chair

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Dr. Karen Lu

Executive vice president and physician in chief at Moffitt Cancer Center

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Dr. Jamie Bakkum-Gamez

Professor of OB/GYN, Consultant in Gynecologic Oncology Surgery, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

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Dr. Stephanie Blank

Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Science, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Director of Gynecologic Oncology, Mount Sinai Health System; Director of Oncology Programs, Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute; Director of Women’s Health, Blavatnik Family Chelsea Medical Center at Mount Sinai

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Dr. Dineo Khabele

Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Mitchell and Elaine Yanow Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

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Dr. Kara Long

Associate Attending, Gynecologic Surgery, Associate Director, Gynecologic Oncology Fellowship Program, Section of Ovarian Cancer Surgery, Department of Surgery, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

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Get Involved

Join the Climb

Summitting the steepest challenges in gynecologic cancer through creativity and research.

Our original music & mountain adventures inspire cancer awareness and research funding with every song and every step.

Join the Climb

Apply For Research Funding

Are you a gynecologic cancer researcher in need of funding?

Our Expedition Team allocates between 20K and 300K dollars in annual Any Mountain Research Grants for creative cutting-edge research addressing the steepest challenges in gynecologic cancer.

Please email us about your work and we will inform you about our next call for proposals.

[email protected]

Dr. Elizabeth Swisher

Dr. Swisher is a clinician scientist, Professor of Gynecologic Oncology, and Adjunct Professor in Medical Genetics at the University of Washington and holds the Torkelson Family Endowed Chair. She is Co-Deputy Director of the Fred Hutchinson/University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Cancer Consortium and co-leads the Breast and Ovary Cancer Program.

The primary focus of Dr. Swisher’s lab is the molecular genetics of ovarian cancer with a view towards improving both prevention and therapeutics. She has been closely involved in the therapeutic development of PARP inhibitors and has a clinical focus on genetics and clinical trials. She has also focused on improving our understanding of genetic risk of ovarian cancers with a goal to increase access to genetic testing and reducing the number of women who die of hereditary ovarian cancer. She is an elected member of the America Association of Physicians and a past recipient of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology Innovator Award, the UW Medicine Excellent in Mentorship Award, and the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance Rosalind Franklin Award for Ovarian Cancer Research.

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Dr. Karen Lu

Dr. Karen Lu’s career has focused on ovarian cancer prevention and early detection for the last 20 years. She is the Executive Vice-President and Physician-in-Chief at Moffitt Cancer Center.

Dr. Lu attended medical school at Yale University and completed her residency at Harvard University through the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital combined program. She also completed a fellowship through Harvard University and the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center.

Dr. Lu is passionate about research in ovarian cancer prevention and early detection. She is excited to partner with a group that shares her passion for developing patient-centered ovarian cancer prevention strategies through Any Mountain. “We are identifying a large cohort of healthy women who are told they are at substantially increased risk for ovarian cancer due to a genetic mutation,” she says. “Let’s work across the world to conduct clinical trials to develop ways to prevent it or catch it early.”

Dr. Lu enjoys being active with her family and she especially enjoys hiking in the U.S. and around the world. We are delighted to have her on the Any Mountain Expedition Team.

View her CV

Dr. Jamie Bakkum-Gamez

Dr. Jamie Bakkum-Gamez has been a practicing gynecologic oncologist on staff at the Mayo Clinic for the past 17 years. Since joining the staff in 2009, she has lead an active, multidisciplinary research team that is studying unique DNA markers that occur in ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer with the goal of developing earlier detection tests for ovarian and endometrial cancer.

Dr. Bakkum-Gamez is the Mayo Clinic site PI for the WISP, WISP2-TUBA, and NRG-CC008 ovarian cancer risk reduction trials, co-leads the Mayo Clinic SPORE in Ovarian Cancer, and was a co-author of the ovarian cancer risk reduction (RRSO) procedure that was added to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines in 2016.

As a gynecologic oncologist, Dr. Bakkum-Gamez cares for women with advanced stage ovarian cancer and improves survival from this disease. She says that in her experience, ovarian cancer “needs better treatments, effective early detection, and optimized risk reduction strategies.” She says this is critical, which is why she is involved in the Any Mountain Project.

At the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Bakkum-Gamez cares for women with and at risk for gynecologic malignancies and she designs and/or runs clinical trials for early gynecologic cancer detection, cancer risk reduction, and novel therapies for gynecologic cancer. Her clinical practice is solely surgical, providing surgery to women with ovarian cancer as well as women with family histories or known genetic pathogenic variants that elevate their risks for ovarian cancer. Dr. Bakkum-Gamez attended the University of Wisconsin Medical School and completed both her OB/GYN residency and gynecologic oncology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic.

In her free time, Dr. Bakkum-Gamez gardens and grows Shiitake mushrooms. She loves to run, be outdoors, spend time with family, and watch scary movies and Indie flicks. We are honored for Dr. Bakkum-Gamez to be a part of the Any Mountain Expedition Team.

View her CV

Dr. Stephanie Blank

Dr. Stephanie Blank teaches obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive science to students of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is also the director of many of their women’s health and gynecologic oncology programs. In her role, she cares for many women with ovarian cancer.

Dr. Blank believes that, learning about cancer risk and sharing this information with family members who can actually act on it is empowering for women with ovarian cancer, and the message that this cancer can be prevented, is compelling and inspiring at a time when these women might not feel so hopeful. “Prevention works,” she says. “The incidence of ovarian cancer is decreasing due to prevention efforts. The Any Mountain Expedition Team is poised to make a difference. Countering cancer by raising awareness through creativity and educating people to take charge of their genetic cancer risk is a challenge – a true mountain – but this amazing group can do it. Any Mountain stresses teamwork, creativity, collaboration, and progress.”

Dr. Blank attended medical school at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. She completed her residency at the Weill Cornell School of Medicine and she completed a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Blank enjoys laughing, hiking, running, swimming in the ocean, mountains, traveling, reading, and being outside as much as possible. We are grateful for her contributions to the Any Mountain Expedition Team.

View her CV

Dr. Dineo Khabele

Dr. Dineo Khabele is a fierce advocate for advancing gynecologic cancer research and care. Her translational research lab focuses on developing new treatments for chemotherapy-resistant ovarian cancer.

Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and her research has been recognized by many honors, including most recently election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians.

Dr. Khabele did her undergraduate and medical school studies at Columbia University. After residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Cornell University Medical Center, she completed a fellowship in Gynecologic Oncology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center.

Dr. Khabele likes to run, read, and relax on the beach or at a spa. We are proud to have such an accomplished doctor on the Any Mountain Expedition Team.

View her CV

Dr. Kara Long

Dr. Kara Long is a surgeon who cares for women with gynecologic cancer and a researcher focusing on prevention, early detection, and the surgical management of ovarian cancer. In addition to her training and years of experience caring for individuals at risk for and with ovarian cancer, she herself is the daughter of an ovarian cancer survivor.

“Experiencing the disease from the perspective of a patient’s family provided me with a deeper understanding of the impact this disease can have on an individual and their family,” she says. “Years after my mother was diagnosed, we learned that she carried a genetic mutation – a mutation that I share with her and one which has empowered me to make decisions to protect myself from developing this disease. Any Mountain is a team of strong, intelligent, and empowered physicians who share my passion for preventing ovarian cancer. Coming together allows us to reach more women and prevent more cases of this terrible disease.”

Dr. Long attended medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her Master’s in Health Science Research from Weill Cornell and she completed her OB/GYN residency at the New York University Medical Center. She completed a fellowship in Gynecologic Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she works today.

Dr. Long likes to spend her free time with 2 amazing kids, family, friends, and her rescue dog Disco. She loves to run (especially the NYC marathon!) and horseback ride. We appreciate the heart and experiences that Dr. Long brings to the Any Mountain project.

View her CV