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Ahead of this month’s WNBA All-Star Game in Indianapolis, the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Susan G. Komen Tissue Bank is looking to assemble its own roster of stars—up to 500 women to donate healthy breast tissue for research.
The tissue bank is especially seeking donations from women of color and those under the age of 40 due to donation needs for those populations. However, all women who meet the eligibility requirements are welcome to donate.
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.
“Breast cancer is rising in young people, and then Black and brown populations, the treatments don’t work as well for them, so the researchers are really interested in those so that’s what we are focusing on,” said Kathi Ridley-Merriweather, communication and recruitment manager for the Komen Tissue Bank at IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center. “That’s because we’re also very focused on health equity.”
The Komen Tissue Bank is part of the Vera Bradley Foundation Center for Breast Cancer Research at the Simon Cancer Center. The cancer center and tissue bank said that donations help researchers better understand the disease by studying the difference between healthy and cancerous breast tissue.
For example, IU researchers have completed the most extensive mapping of healthy breast cells, which serves as a tool to better understand how breast cancer develops, as well as the differences in tissue among genetic ancestries, according to the cancer center.
The donation process takes 60 to 90 minutes. The donor is administered local anesthesia while a gram of tissue, about the size of three peas, is removed from one breast with a needle. Volunteers must meet the requirements, including being 18 years or older.
Beyond recruiting up to 500 women to donate breast tissue, officials from the Komen Tissue Bank said the event also requires hundreds of volunteers, including numerous medical assistants, nurses, physician assistants and other health care professionals.
“We try to make it fun,” said Jill Henry, operations manager of the Komen Tissue Bank at IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center. “We have refreshments, and everybody is really positive during the event.”
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.
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