“They tell a friend and we speak to 2000, and so on.

“No one is protected from this disease.

“Let’s come together, and turn from spectators into participants.”

TENACIOUS MOSMAN TIGER GIRLS WIN RUGBY

UNDERWATER HOMES A HIT WITH MARINE LIFE

The 28-year-old knows the devastation breast cancer can leave in its wake.

It will be a year next month that her older sister Vanessa Juresic lost her life to a rare and aggressive strain known as Triple Negative Breast Cancer.

Sadly, she survived just three months after her shock terminal diagnosis at age 36.

There’s a lot Sophie wants us to know. Determined to raise awareness and money for ongoing research at the Garvan Institute — where Vanessa was a patient — she and grieving friends and family have started The White Butterfly, an annual fundraiser for the lifesaving cause, fulfilling her sister’s dying wish.

The inaugural event, an afternoon garden party, will be held at the Woolwich Pier Hotel on October 19.

“The representation of white butterfly comes down to something simple, but yet so perfect,” she continued.

“Selfless love on Earth is stronger than death.

“What Vanessa has done for the Garvan institute, for her family and for the world is selfless, and what this means for us, what this gives us the opportunity to do, is to make that love stronger than death.

“Together we can research, operate, nurse, fundraise, but most of all care, and take a stab at finding a cure for Triple Negative Cancer.”

Vanessa grew up in Lane Cove, attending St Michael’s Catholic Primary School and graduating from Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College in neighbouring North Sydney before studying Communications at Sydney University. Vanessa went on to become a senior media advisor to a State Minister in the NSW Government, living near Balmoral Beach for her last few years.

She was a patient under renowned Garvan oncologist and researcher Elgene Lim, who also spoke of her at the recent Breast Cancer community update.

“We see the public and our patients as partners in our research,” Dr Lim said.

“We all know that breast cancer is a horrible disease, and we are still far away from curing it.

“The patient is front and centre of this symposia.

“Sophie lost her sister Vanessa 11 months ago, and Vanessa was a particularly inspiring patient, and that experience has really urged Sophie and her family to do miraculous things and they are now very strong advocates of breast cancer research in the community.

“It is of no use to us to study this disease in Petri dishes or in mice — our patients have a critical role in our research agenda.

“We are all on the same page — to rid the world of this horrible disease.”

Jason Carroll, who grew up in Willoughby and attended St Thomas Catholic Primary School as a youngster, went on to give the day’s Connie Johnson Memorial Lecture about his own research, investigating how different hormones affect breast cancer cells, and what genes they switch on and off.

Dr Carroll is now based at the Cancer Research UK at Cambridge University and leading the charge in the global race to a cure.

“I grew up in Willoughby and moved to Melbourne to do my undergraduate and I did my PHD at the Garvan and spent four of five years here and it was an amazing experience and really shaped me as a scientist,” he said.

“I then went to Harvard Medical School, which was incredible to be exposed to science on a scale I’d never seen before.

“My wife is English so I then ended up at Cambridge University, but it’s wonderful to be home.”

Dr Carroll, whose work centres on hormone dependent cancers, said there had been a big shift in breast cancer survival, which was a direct consequence of decades of research. He said an Estrogen Receptor sits in DNA and turns specific genes on to cause cancer, with 75 per cent of breast cancer driven by this process.

“We are learning new things every day,” he said.

“We went through a technological revolution a few years ago where we looked at an old problem and made discoveries we never knew existed.

“It’s been a fantastic and exciting couple of years — we’ve gone back and challenged paradigms and rewritten some of the rules.

“What my lab has been interested in, is how this little protein, this Estrogen Receptor, does its job.

“We know it sits in a cancer cell and causes it to grow, and trying to gain insight into that process has really dominated my life for the last few decades.

“We need to gain that insight to either use current treatments more effectively or develop new treatments.

“There is still a way to go, and a lot of work that has to be done.”

There are currently 14 clinical trials being conducted by the Garvan to help develop targeted treatments and discover a cure for the 10 different types of breast cancer, which 10 Australian women die of, every day.

Women like Vanessa.

“Vanessa was strong, tenacious, beautiful and my intelligent big sister,” Sophie said.

“She made it her mission to be kind to anyone that walked into her life, even if it was the ones that were giving her the bad news that she had a year to live.

“She brought cupcakes for the nurses, she befriended other patients on their first day of chemo or radiology, letting them know it was going to be okay.

“She did all she could to become best friends with her oncologists, and knock down the walls of those patient-doctor relationships.

“She created partnerships and friendships with anyone that crossed her path.”

Before she died, Vanessa penned a letter that was read at her funeral and went viral online, shared hundreds of thousands of times across the world.

“If you want something — go get it now,” her letter read.

“Trust me, you do not want to be writing this letter. Stop procrastinating.

“There are three rules — If you do not go after what you want, you’ll never have it.

“If you do not ask, the answer will always be no.

“If you do not step forward, you will remain in the same place.

“And most importantly; my golden rule.

“In a world where you can be anything … be kind … and don’t let anyone make you cruel.”

The White Butterfly event will be held on Saturday, October 19 at the Woolwich Pier Hotel. Organisers are calling for donations to be auctioned off on the day, and would love to hear from you. Follow the page at www.facebook.com/thewhitebutterflyorg/ or email info@thewhitebutterfly.org to offer a donation and register your interest in attending, with limited tickets to be released next month.