What we call currently breast cancer shouild be thought of as 10 completely separate diseases, according to a new international study which has been sescribed as "landmark". The categories could improve treatment by tailoring drugs for a patient's exact type of breast cancer and help predict survival more accurately. The study in 'Nature' analyzed breast cancers from 20,00 women. It will take about three years for findings to be used in hospitals. Researchers compared breast cancer to the map of the world. They said tests currently used in the hospitals were quite broad, splitting breast cancer up into the equivalent of continents. The latest findings give the breast cancer map far more details, alloweing you to find individual coutries. Prof Carlos Caldas, the lead researcher of the study said, "Our study will pave the way for doctors in the future to daignose a type of breast cancer a woman has, the types of drugs that will work and those that would not work, in a much more pricise way than is currently possible." At the moment breast cancer are classified by what they look like under the microscope and tests for "markers" on the tumours. Those with "oestrogen receptors" should respond to harmone therapies such as temaxifen, those with "Her 2 receptors" can be treated with Herceptin. The researcher's team looked at frozen cancer samples from 20,00 women at hospitals on UK and Canada. They looked in huge details at the genetics of tumour cells- which genes had been mutated, which genes were working in overdrive, which had been shut down. The results of the study indicated that all the different ways the cells change when they become cancerous could be grouped into 10 different categories called IntClust one to 10. Prof Caldas said this was " a completely new way of looking at the breast cancer" He said it will chamnge the way we look at breast cancer, it will have enormous impact in years to come in dagnosing and treating the breasst cancer.
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