Doctors are a step closer to finding a drug that could stop one
of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer from growing.
Britain's Institute of Cancer Research has discovered how and
where a form of breast cancer known as "triple negative"
develops. Sam Hills was one of 9,000 women who are diagnosed
each year with "triple negative" breast cancer. She was pregnant
at the time with son Harvey, who is now a healthy four-year-old.
She didn't realize then, but she had one form of cancer that was
very difficult to treat. Breast cancer is normally diagnosed by
the presence or lack of three receptors which fuel them, the
hormones estrogen and progesterone and the protein HER2. Drugs
target these receptors. But "triple negative" tumors don't have
these receptors. Instead, they come from cells called
progenitors which are not fully functional, hence the lack of
response from targeted drugs. But new research in this west
London laboratory has identified the source of "triple negative"
breast cancer, which makes the p