Breast cancer still claiming the lives of too many women, according to UK charity

The UK charity, Breast Cancer Campaign claims that despite a good update of breast cancer screening, breast cancer still claims the lives of thousands of women because the breast cancer treatment they are given doesn't always work and their breast cancer continues to develop.

In 2008, they published a detailed study of how breast cancer research is done in the UK. Collaboration between 56 of the UK’s top breast cancer experts looked at the overall pattern of research and have highlighted important gaps that need to be addressed.

Although survival rates for breast cancer treatment have increased dramatically over the last 40 years, and many more women now live with their cancer and enjoy a good quality of life, 12 500 of the 44 000 women diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK each year do die.

One big stumbling block that cancer researchers need to try to understand is why breast cancer treatments work really well for some patients, but don’t have any effect on the cancer of others. Another is why women who seem to have beaten the disease suffer recurrence and relapse years later.

The report highlights many areas that need to be researched more fully and the Breast Cancer Campaign recommends the following priorities:

Find better ways ways to predict who will develop breast cancer and then work out how to prevent it
Work out how to tell which women will suffer relapses years after apparently successful cancer treatment
Find out more about the factors that allow breast cancer to spread to other body sites
Improve methods to assess how well breast cancer treatments are working at a very early stage of therapy
Study and understand more about how breast cancer affects women pschologically and emotionally.

Pamela Goldberg, Chief Executive Breast Cancer Campaign said, "Breast cancer research has made considerable progress over the past two decades and vital work is still underway. But there are still significant knowledge gaps.

"Greater attention must be paid to all stages of breast cancer. The experiences of older women and those from minority ethnic groups must be considered, particularly in light of recent research showing breast cancer develops earlier in black women and their survival rates are poorer."

Breast Cancer Campaign is has committed a total budget of £11.3 million to fund almost 100 new research projects in the UK, in many different areas, including the genetics of breast cancer, new treatments, and how screening could be improved.

One of the big hopes is that computer modelling and new programs will be developed so that treatments for breast cancer can be tailored to individual patients to give them the best chance of beating the disease.

"We have set out a blueprint for future breast cancer research by this analysis and we are already filling some of the gaps," says Pamela Goldberg.

"While we are working in an exciting age of discovery, our resources are limited. The Government, funding bodies and scientists should focus on these gaps to drive advances in knowledge into improvements in patient care. If we co-ordinate our resources and target the priorities in breast cancer research, we can ensure an environment of scientific excellence and plug these gaps."