Triple Negative Breast Cancer: Chandra Dattani's Story

Chandra Dattani's smile lit up the room, and her laughter was contagious.

But when the beloved Saskatoon businesswoman and volunteer was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, even her husband, a physician, found very little information about therapies or drugs that could heal her.

"There was very scant literature on triple negative, and I was asking them, why?" said Dr. Dan Dattani.

Typically, oncology teams target estrogen and progesterone receptors to stop breast cancer tumours from growing and spreading. 

Unfortunately, those targets don't work for the 15 to 20 per cent of breast cancer patients with triple negative breast cancer, a swift-moving and aggressive form of the disease.

Still, Chandra Dattani and her family decided to fight back.

They established the Chandra Dattani Memorial Fund in 2010. It's currently endowed with a balance of over 120 thousand dollars, and continues to support critical cancer research on an annual basis.

"She was so dedicated to making sure we'd never gave up on ourselves and was really our biggest cheerleader every step of the way," said Seema Jain, Dattani's eldest daugher.

In this episode, Jain joins her siblings and her father in unraveling her mother's story, and pushing for more research and therapies dedicated to women with a triple negative diagnosis.

"Our biggest hope is hopefully women won't have to suffer the way our mom did," said Dr. Sheev Dattani. 

"Hopefully there will be better treatments coming down the road."