Breast cancer breakthrough

UP TO 800 Scottish women every year could be saved from death from breast cancer, thanks to a development by Edinburgh University scientists.

Researchers from the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Unit have become the first to identify a gene's key role in causing the spread of common HER2-positive breast cancer to other parts of the body.

The gene is called C35 and becomes overactive in this type of tumour, but drugs in development could potentially kill cancer cells which used the gene.

It is thought this type of drug would therefore be a new treatment for HER2 positive breast cancer.