WNBA All-Star Cure event seeks breast tissue donors for research
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIn two weeks, the WNBA’s biggest stars will take center court at Gainbridge Fieldhouse for the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game.
Off the court, cancer researchers organizing the All-Star Cure event are hoping for a slam dunk of their own.
The Komen Tissue Bank at the IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center is the only biobank in the world that collects healthy breast tissue to be used in research. The goal is to collect tissue from 500 women.
Comparing healthy tissue to cancerous tissue helps researchers understand how to beat breast cancer.
“We know the source of some breast cancers, but there are other breast cancers, particularly more aggressive ones, that we don’t know what causes them,” Kathi Ridley-Merriweather, communication and recruitment manager for the Komen Tissue Bank, told Inside INdiana Business. “The best way to know more about that is to study people who do not have breast cancer, to see what the normal breast looks like.”
While any woman who meets the eligibility criteria is welcome to donate, the tissue bank is hoping to reach Black and Brown women over 18 and women of any race or ethnicity under 40. Currently, only one-quarter of the Komen Tissue Bank donors represent minorities.
“Those are the groups that researchers need the most. We know the least about those groups and breast cancer,” Ridley-Merriweather said. “Black and Brown people have very valid hesitations about participation in medical research. I love to go out and talk to these population members and explain how and why medical research is safe now.”
The donation process takes about 60-90 minutes. A similar event was held when Indianapolis hosted the Super Bowl in 2012.
“The outreach for sports is huge. It’s a great way to bring in this health focus to a group that may not know about the Komen Tissue Bank, may not know a lot about breast cancer,” Ridley-Merriweather said. “This is the WNBA. Women work for women all the time. We are always in it for each other.”
The Komen Tissue Bank’s All-Star Cure event is July 12-13 at the cancer center, 1030 W. Michigan St. in Indianapolis, as a partnership with the WNBA All-Star 2025 Host Committee ahead of the July 19 game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
Participants can sign up online, by calling 866-763-0047 or emailing komentb@iu.edu.
More than 5,000 women have donated breast tissue since 2007, according to the Komen Tissue Bank at IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center. Researchers from organizations including Purdue University, Mayo Clinic, National Cancer Institute, Yale University, Dartmouth College, the UK’s Breakthrough Research Centre at The Royal Marsden Hospital have used the tissue bank.
IBJ health reporter Daniel Lee contributed to this story.