Scientists Parse Genes Of Breast Cancer’s Four Major Types

Scientists have known for a while that breast cancer is really four different diseases, with subtypes among them, an insight that has helped improve treatment for some women.

But experts haven’t understood much about how these four types differ. A new report, published online in the journal Nature, provides a big leap in that understanding.

“This paper gives us a level of detailed knowledge of breast cancer that vastly exceeds what was available before,” says Matthew Meyerson, one of the paper’s 348 authors. The effort is part of The Cancer Genome Atlas network, funded by the National Institutes of Health.