Three New Breast Cancer Genes Found Could Save Thousands of Lives a Year

Three key breast cancer genes have been pinpointed by British scientists in a breakthrough likened to finding gold in Trafalgar Square.

The discovery could save thousands of lives a year by providing researchers with the inspiration they need to come up with vital new treatments for the most common form of the disease.

Despite the preliminary nature of the research, the first new drugs could be available in as little as five years.

Crucially, the new medicines would attack the cancer in a different way to existing treatments, meaning they should work where current therapies fail, saving some of the 1,000 lives a month lost to the disease in the UK alone, reports the Daily Mail.

The potential implications of the genes – and the surprising place in which they were found – has led the researchers to liken their discovery to stumbling across a chest of gold on the well-trodden paving slabs of Trafalgar Square.

During the five-year study, the researchers studied the DNA of 104  breast cancer patients. All of the women studied had something known as oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, which accounts for four in five of all breast tumours and is also to blame for the bulk of the 12,000 lives lost to the disease a year.

Researcher Professor Mitch Dowsett said, “This research is exciting because it  shows that while the oestrogen receptor is the main driver of hormonal breast cancer, there are others next door to it that also appear to influence breast  cancer behaviour.

“We now need to better understand how they work together and how we can utilize them to save lives of women with breast cancer.”