Our unique strategy

We’re striving to know more about breast biology and the genes involved in breast cancer. And we want our knowledge to benefit people with breast cancer as quickly as possible.

Three themes - early and accurate diagnosis of breast cancer; new, targeted treatments, and, the ultimate aim, prevention – guide our research.

The focal point of our work is the Breakthrough Research Centre – the UK’s first research facility dedicated solely to breast cancer research. Many of the world’s best cancer research scientists can be found working here.

We’ve also opened three more research units in Edinburgh, Manchester and London. Each of which studies a specific aspect of breast cancer.

Breakthrough only funds high quality research. Independent scientific and clinical experts scrutinise all funding applications and we accept or reject proposals according to their advice.

We support multidisciplinary research that studies breast cancer from several angles, providing vital collaboration and information-sharing to ensure its success.

We’re committed to translational research too. Also known as the bench-to-bedside approach, this translates discoveries made in the lab into treatments provided at a patient’s bedside. It is a two-way process: we also study tumour samples from patients to find out how effective treatments are and whether they could be improved.

Since the opening of the Breakthrough Research Centre in 1999, the result of an £8.8m investment, we’ve awarded £55m in grants. Of this, some £35m has funded work at the Breakthrough Research Centre.

We awarded more than £8m in 2008 – and expect to do the same in 2009.