Reflecting on the latest BBC News that the disease that is referred to as breast cancer should in fact be known as ten different diseases, Consultant Breast Surgeon, Professor Kefah Mokbel writes:
Despite progress in the field of breast cancer over the last two decades, our classification of tumours remain gross and does not accurately predict breast cancer behaviour. Our current treatments remain crude with limited efficacy.
This is an exciting development (from a very large study) that improves our understanding of how genetic changes influence breast cancer progression. This knowledge will allow us to develop new tests that accurately predict disease behaviour and outcome and develop new and less toxic drugs better tailored to the different types of breast cancer depending upon the genetic signatures of the tumours.
The study, published in Nature, found that hospitals currently test breast cancer under a wide scope, but through looking at the genetics of the tumour cells and how they mutate the researchers discovered that there are ten ways in which they change leading to the diagnosis of ten different types of breast cancer.
