Scientists identify six types of breast cancer - The Independent 2nd October 2007

It is the commonest cancer in Britain, affecting 41,000 women a year – but not all breast cancers are the same. Yesterday, researchers said they had identified six types of the disease, with widely differing survival rates. The finding could help doctors give more accurate prognoses to patients, as well as targeting them with more specialised treatments. Researchers at the University of Nottingham analysed 25 proteins present in the breast tissue of cancer patients and clustered them into groups according to how long the patients survived. They found two of the six groups had significantly longer survival and one had significantly shorter survival, while the remaining three fell between these extremes.

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