Breast cancer patients could benefit from existing targeted treatments

As many as one in five women with breast cancer could benefit from a drug used to treat ovarian cancer, according to new estimates. Previous research has focused on women who might benefit from these drugs based on inherited genetic faults causing their breast cancer, around 1 to 5% of cases. The drugs are being tested in clinical trials for breast cancer. Professor Sir Mike Stratton, director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, where the research took place, said that this type of analysis could point to “the complete set of cancers that will respond to certain drugs that are