Whether you’ve bought a cupcake, attended a themed formal or hit the dance floor at Revs, many of us have at some point donated to Pink Week, a student-led organisation that raises money and awareness for breast cancer charities – specifically Future Dreams, Maggie’s, Breast Cancer Now and Black Women Rising. This year, close to 60,000 people in the UK will be diagnosed with breast cancer. These charities work towards supporting everyone affected by the disease, from patients to families. So what developments is your money funding, and what has been achieved so far?

Breast Cancer Now is the largest breast cancer charity in the UK, and was formed in 2015 when Breast Cancer Campaign and Breakthrough Breast Cancer united. It has invested over £300 million into breast cancer research, and is currently funding over 90 projects aimed both at preventing and treating breast cancer.

“This year, over 11,000 people in the UK will die from breast cancer, and so charities and organisations such as Pink Week remain vital”

Breast cancer is usually classed as one of three types, based on the proteins present on the cancer cells: oestrogen receptor (ER) positive, Her2 positive, or triple negative (TNBC). The triple negative subtype is typically more aggressive than the other forms and disproportionally affects younger women and Black women. Unlike the others, triple negative cancers do not respond to targeted treatment, which is typically more effective and has fewer side effects than standard chemotherapies. As a result, there is a lot of effort going into finding better treatments for TNBC.

The Breast Cancer Now research unit at King’s College London is entirely focused on studying TNBC. It employs 12 scientists, across three research teams, and currently costs £1920 a day to run. One team at the research centre, led by Dr John Mayer, is investigating how the immune system could be exploited to target breast cancer cells.

“T cells make up part of our body’s natural immune defence, and so can target abnormal cells, such as cancer cells”

T cells make up part of our body’s natural immune defence, and so can target abnormal cells, such as cancer cells. Chimaeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy involves the modification of a person’s own T cells to make them more active against cancer cells. T cells are removed from the blood of the patient and, using a modified virus, a special type of receptor is added to them: the CAR. These modified cells proliferate in the lab before being reintroduced to the patient. The CAR can recognise proteins on the surface of cancer cells which aren’t present on healthy cells, and the recognition of cancer proteins stimulates the T cell to kill the cancer cell.

CAR T therapy has so far been effective at treating blood cancers. However, solid tumours, such as breast cancer, create an ‘immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment’, meaning the area surrounding the tumour acts to weaken the immune system, typically by harnessing regulatory T cells (Tregs) which secrete anti-inflammatory chemical signals. This reduces the effectiveness of CAR T cells. Dr Mayer has helped to develop a new type of ‘armoured’ CAR T cell that aims to overcome this by not just targeting cancer cells, but also resisting the signals that cancer uses to weaken the immune system. This study is still in the early stages, but, if safe and effective, could revolutionise the way that TNBC is treated.

“Olaparib was revolutionary as the first cancer treatment that targeted a specific mutation in cancer cells”

As well as the research unit at KCL, Breast Cancer Now (and the charities it was formed from) have run the Toby Robins Research Centre at the Institute of Cancer Research for the last 25 years, employing close to 100 scientists. Over the years, the teams there have been involved in the development of numerous breast cancer drugs, such as olaparib (Lynparza), which was approved for use by the NHS in April 2023. Olaparib is known as a PARP inhibitor and was revolutionary as the first cancer treatment that targeted a specific mutation in cancer cells. Professor Alan Ashworth worked for Breakthrough Breast Cancer at the Toby Robins centre and in 2005, discovered that PARP inhibitors were effective at destroying breast cancer cells with BRCA mutations, which are common causes of hereditary breast cancer. This information went on to be used in the clinical development of olaparib by AstraZeneca.

In addition to this work into treatments, Breast Cancer Now has also been running a Generations Study since 2004 that is following over 110,000 women for 40 years to help understand why breast cancer develops, in the hope of preventing it in the generations of the future. So far, the study has identified 300 genetic changes that may increase a person’s risk of developing breast cancer, and continues to look for associations between lifestyle and the development of breast cancer.

Overall, breast cancer treatment has been revolutionised in recent years, with researchers at Oxford Population Health finding that women who are diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer today are 66% less likely to die from the disease within five years of diagnosis than they were 20 years ago. Much of this improvement is due to the hard work by scientists at Breast Cancer Now research centres and other institutions. However, this year, over 11,000 people in the UK will die from breast cancer, and so charities and organisations such as Pink Week remain vital.

If you would like to join the fight against breast cancer, you can donate to Pink Week here.