Cancer Research UK funded several large trials in the 1980s that contributed significantly to a major breakthrough in the treatment of early breast cancer. Since 1989, death rates from breast cancer have decreased every year in the UK.

The first drug to be tested in early stage clinical trials by Cancer Research UK in the early 1980s was formestane – a drug for advanced breast cancer.

In the 1990s, our scientists showed that giving the drug tamoxifen to all breast cancer patients who needed it, whatever their age, could save an extra 20,000 lives each year worldwide. This overturned the conventional belief that the drug had no benefit for younger women.

In 2003, our researchers showed that radiotherapy is more effective than the drug tamoxifen for treating pre-cancerous breast lumps known as Ductal Carcinoma in Situ (DCIS).

In 2005, Cancer Research UK-funded scientists showed that radiotherapy after "lumpectomy" surgery for breast cancer could help to save lives. And in 2006, we found that giving breast cancer patients fewer but larger doses of radiotherapy may be as safe and as effective at reducing the risk of the cancer returning.

Around one in twenty cases of breast cancer are due to inherited faults in either the BRCA1 gene or the BRCA2 gene. Cancer Research UK is currently helping to fund a clinical trial to test whether a drug called carboplatin could help treat breast cancer that has come back after chemotherapy in women with these gene faults.

Support us

Help us to continue our clinical trials to improve breast cancer treatments by fundraising for us. You can organise your own pink event or join other people in your community and take part in one of our charity walks.

Want to know more?

If you or someone you know has been diagnosed with cancer, you can find more detailed information on our patient information site, CancerHelp UK.