Marisa Renee Lee, the Pink Agenda’s fabulous Founder and President, was featured in the most recent issue of Gotham Magazine in the article titled “The Future of Philanthropy.”

Marisa’s vision, strength, smarts and savvy have led the Pink Agenda down a path of success over the past few years that will be hard to top. If you want to know more about Marisa, the Pink Agenda and other hot philanthropies steaming up the city, pick up the December 2008 issue of Gotham Magazine on the newsstands.

Tamoxifen is a pharmaceutical prescribed to women diagnosed with or at risk for breast cancer. For women with estrogen receptor positive (ER+) tumors (also known as simply “estrogen receptive tumors”), tamoxifen works to inhibit further growth of tumors. For women at risk of developing cancerous breast tumors, tamoxifen is used preventatively. Tamoxifen has come under scrutiny recently for its possible detriments to women’s health, although it has been found to be effective for many women. But what exactly does the drug do, and how does it work?

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This marks the beginning of science and research-focused blog posting for TPA. Before we go any further, you should know that I am not even close to an expert on these subjects. I do hope to enter the health profession as a provider, but so far I have only an undergraduate education in these areas. What this means is that I can usually look at a science journal article and come away with the key points, and that I have enough familiarity with the language to “translate” from medical jargon into everyday conversation. This is what I will try to do for you here. What I don’t know, I will look up, like anyone else. The point is to bring you science-based breast cancer information that you otherwise may not have heard, and to give you some basic understanding of the incredibly complicated research world surrounding breast cancer. You are always encouraged to go to the original source of the information—and, please, corrections are welcome. I hope you find it helpful.

And with that…

UsMagazine.com has a great slideshow on their site featuring 11 celebrities who beat breast cancer.

Cynthia Nixon, who attended this year’s Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure (run and crawled by The Pink Agenda), made the list for keeping her diagnosis with breast cancer private until she fully recovered.

Get your Hollywood gossip fix and watch the full slideshow here.

Oprah kicked off breast cancer awareness month one day early, and had Christina Applegate on to discuss her breast cancer diagnosis and subsequent double mastectomy.

Speaking candidly on a recent taping for Oprah Winfrey’s talk show, Applegate revealed, “I did my first and last nudie photoshoot at home. I made sure that I have close-up photographs of them from every angle, so I can kind of remember them.”

Since the operation to remove her breasts, doctors have implanted “expanders” in the actress’ chest, which will eventually allow them to sculpt fake breasts for her.

She explained, “They keep expanding over a few months until they take those out and put in your implants… They have this strange little thing that they insert in there and they keep filling it up with saline to expand behind the muscles.”

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Mia Perovtz, an up-and-coming performer, is bringing her one woman show: The Things I Wish My Mother Would Have Told Me to New York City for October 2008 Breast Cancer awareness Month.

The play is about Mia’s journey through her mothers breast cancer battle and coming to terms with her mother’s passing, all while facing pending test results for a possible genetic predisposition to the BRCA gene mutation.

The play opens October 22nd - November 2nd. Watch the trailer for Mia’s play here, visit her website and purchase tickets now!

On Friday, September 5, Hollywood came out to help raise over $100 million at the Stand Up to Cancer fundraising telethon. Famous faces included cancer survivors Christina Applegate, Melissa Etheridge and Sheryl Crow. From NYC’s Fashion Rocks event, Beyonce, Fergie, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Carrie Underwood and Miley Cyrus performed “Just Stand Up,” a tune written just for the special. John McCain and Barack Obama each weighed in on the cause as well.

Funds from the show will be dedicated to new research and the development of experimental therapies for cancer patients, according to the Entertainment Industry Foundation, the nonprofit behind the telethon.

These undated images, provided by the Mayo Cliniic, show a regular mamogram, left, and molecular breast imaging (MBI) from a study performed on a 45-year-old patient in the clinic’s screening of women with dense breasts. The mammogram was interpreted as being negative while the MBI image shows a cancerous growth indicated by the arrow. (AP Photo/The Mayo Clinic)

A recent article in the New York Times details a new detection method for spotting breast cancer called molecular breast imaging, or MBI.

An MBI uses a radioactive tracer that “lights up” cancer hiding inside dense breasts, revealing more tumors and giving fewer false alarm. MRI is often used now for women with dense breasts, but it gives many false alarms that lead to unnecessary biopsies. Doctors hope MBI will prove more accurate and cost less — under $500 versus more than $1,000 for an MRI.

We’re also proud to say that The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation (the very charity that the Pink Agenda donates our fundraisings) and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which makes the imaging agent used in the study, paid for the work.

This is exactly why the Pink Agenda exists. We want to raise money for technology that will help men and women in the fight against breast cancer. Advancements like this only help throw fuel on our fire to keep working for this important and personal cause.

Read more about molecular breast imaging here.

Help support the Pink Agenda as we hit the mean streets of Central Park on Sunday, September 14th to Race for the Cure and support the Susan G. Komen foundation in its fight against breast cancer.

Last year, half the group completed the race in record time, while the other half (aka “the too social group”) puffed across the finish line late in the game. For The Pink Agenda, it didn’t matter how long it took us — just that we all finished the race and we did it as a team. We’re all looking forward to round two this fall — as well as the necessary greasy diner retreat immediately following our morning of excercize.

Join us on the pavement or just show us you care and throw a dollar - or a hundred — our way.

“I’m going to have cute boobs ’til I’m 90, so there’s that. I’ll have the best boobs in the nursing home. I’ll be the envy of all the ladies around the bridge table.” — Christina Applegate on the bright side of having reconstructive surgery after her double mastectomy

Applegate, current star of Samantha Who? and even more importantly, Sue Ellen from my favorite flick, “Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead” made her recent breast cancer diagnosis public on August 2nd. Today she announced that in order to combat this disease, “The only [choice] that seemed the most logical and the one that was going to work for me was to have a bilateral mastectomy.”

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