Breast cancer initiative unveiled

A new breast cancer initiative that will match the latest treatments with patients will improve life expectations significantly, the Minister for Health and Children Mary Harney has said.

The first National Breast Cancer Bio Resource centre will be available on a voluntary basis at the designated breast cancer centres in Galway, Cork, Limerick and Dublin.

The resource is a joint initiative by Aviva Health Insurance and the charity Breast Cancer Ireland. Specialist breast research nurses will facilitate the collection of serum and tissues samples. Those samples will be used to determine the best treatment for patients.

Ms Harney said it would reduce the time for new treatment discoveries to become available to patients from two to three years to six to nine months.

She added that there had already been a significant improvement in the life expectancy of breast cancer sufferers with the numbers surviving five years after diagnosis rising by 6.4 per cent between 2002 and 2006 from 74.2 per cent to 80.6 per cent.

Breast Cancer Ireland director Professor Arnold Hill, who is professor of surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons, said the initiative would be of “huge benefit to patients” and amounted to an “extraordinary sea change” in the speed in which new discoveries will become available to them.

He cited the example of the highly successful breast cancer drug herceptin which is effective on 20 per cent of cancer sufferers. “There is a whole panel of drugs similar to it (herceptin) from which particular group of patients will benefit,” he explained.

Personalised treatment programmes could be drawn up for the 2,400 women who get breast cancer every year based on the biology of the patient’s individual tumour, he predicted.

“The information (from the bio centre) will be of great benefit to know which patients will benefit from which drugs,” he said. “I have no doubt that the outcome for patients is improving. I have no doubt that in time, with the newer treatments available, it is ultimately is going to be of huge benefit to patients.

Well-known oncologist Professor John Crown, the chair of the All Ireland Cooperative Oncology Research Group (Icorp), described the bio centre as a “wonderful opportunity” to expand on its role in clinical trials research towards an integrated breast cancer research programme in Ireland.