BREAST CANCER WILL KILL THOUSANDS MORE UNLESS WE PLUG GAPS IN RESEARCH-STUDY WARNS!

Breast cancer could kill 185,000 women in Britain by 2030 (Picture: PA)

Breast cancer could kill 185,000 women in Britain by 2030 unless more is done to plug gaps in research, a report published today reveals.

We are falling behind other countries when it comes to treating the disease and need to ‘up our game’, the study commissioned by Breast Cancer Campaign states.

Experts identified ten key areas where more research was needed, including how genetic changes cause the onset of breast cancer.

However, BCC chief executive, Baroness Delyth Morgan, remains hopeful that breast cancer fatalities will be a thing of the past in 40 years.

She said: ‘If we don’t act now, by 2030 more than 1.2million women could be living with or after a breast cancer diagnosis and around 185,000 lives could have been lost.

‘We want future mothers, daughters and wives to have their breast cancer prevented, cured or for them to outlive the disease, and hope that together we can achieve this by 2050.’

More than 100 scientists, clinicians and healthcare workers were involved in the report, Gap Analysis 2013. Author Prof Sue Eccles said: ‘Our biggest problem is knowing what happens when cancers progress and escape from therapy.

There’s no point in looking at the primary tumour, 80 per cent of which are curable. It’s the 20 per cent that escape.’

Fellow author Prof Alastair Thompson said the study, published in Breast Cancer Research, ‘gives us scientific rationale to change clinical practice’.

He added only a very small number of women have cancer that has spread tested through a biopsy.The metro reports.