The Pink Rose appeal raises money for vital research into breast cancer

undertaken at the Cambridge Breast Cancer Research Unit at Addenbrooke’s, to

help achieve progress in understanding and treating this terrible disease. In the

last five years Pink Rose events held by people all over the region, have raised

over £300,000. Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust would like to build on this success

by aiming to raise £50,000 this year to support the 40,000 British women who

are diagnosed with breast cancer annually. Research projects currently

undertaken at the Cambridge Breast Cancer Research Unit will result in

improvements into patient management within the next five years.

First the good news – more people than ever are surviving breast cancer thanks to early diagnosis

and improved treatment. But there is of course much more we can do, and supporters’ donations

will help us continue the momentum at the Cambridge Breast Cancer Research Unit, opened in July

2008.

Every year, 40,000 women in the UK are diagnosed with breast cancer, and around 20% of them

will die. We are working to reduce this percentage still further by developing different and more

selective types of treatment.

The new Cambridge Breast Cancer Research Unit, attached to the Cambridge Breast Unit, provides

a focus for the vast programme of clinical and translational research into breast cancer currently

carried out, and enables a seamless link from the laboratory to clinical care.

Our research uses molecular bar codes to improve the way we sort cancers into different groups

that will then require different treatment. The bar codes are obtained by studying in the laboratory

the genes that are present in breast cancer cells. These bar codes will enable us to develop new

diagnostic tests and select the best treatment for each individual patient.

The Research Unit has also allowed us to strengthen significantly the clinical research that was

already being done in the Breast Unit.

In particular we have been able to start four new projects of clinically-based translational research:

1. development and validation of novel imaging modalities for early

diagnosis and for monitoring of patients while receiving treatment

2. isolation and characterisation of circulating tumour cells in patients with advanced breast

cancer with the aim of developing more effective treatment response monitoring

3. establishment of an adult breast stem cell programme in Cambridge, which will lead to the

development of novel treatment strategies that target the cells that start cancers

4. cancer drug development programme specifically focused on aggressive breast cancers

The funds from the Pink Rose Appeal will be used to support these and other

innovative translational research programmes being run at the Research Unit and

importantly to create new PhD fellowships for young clinicians that will be trained

in Cambridge to become the breast cancer doctors of the future.

Professor Carlos Caldas,

Director, Cambridge Breast Cancer Research Unit