Breast cancer: A medical breakthrough?
Related Articles
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the Irish Cancer Society along with the Europa Donna organisation is running a number of campaigns, including leaflet drops and fundraising events, to highlight the issues around it.
While thousands of women each year are affected by a breast cancer diagnosis, groundbreaking research in the UK has offered new hope for treatment of the disease in the future.
This month it emerged that Cambridge researchers have found a gene that is thought to play a role in more than half of breast cancer tumours. The gene, NRG1, normally works as a guard in suppressing cancerous tumours. But the researchers found that cancerous cells are missing part of this gene.
Everyone is born with an intact NRG1 gene but in some people -- it isn't yet clear why -- it becomes damaged during their lifetime, allowing cancerous tumours to grow.
Dr Paul Edwards of the pathology unit at Cambridge said the discovery provided 'vital information' about how some cancers spread. Experts hope they will be able to target therapies at specific cancers in future.
Meanwhile, researchers are engaged in 14 separate clinical trials across Ireland to advance the treatment of breast cancer.
Breast cancer patients at universities and hospitals nationwide are being offered cutting-edge therapies as part of these trials which hope to advance cancer drugs. While the treatments are confined to small groups of women who fit into certain categories, those selected will be offered treatments previously only available in the US or Europe.
Irish Independent
