Breast cancer patients could have more personalised care after scientists created a list of all the different causes of the disease.
The study, published in the scientific journal Nature, looked at 560 breast cancers to detect patterns in the genetic mutations that could cause them.
They analysed the DNA of the cancerous cells and compared them with healthy cells to develop a map of the changes to the genetic code that frequently arose in the affected cells.
From this analysis the team discovered the mutations in 93 proteins.
The discovery is significant because most cancers have distinctive genetic signatures, which means that the diseases themselves will respond differently to medication. By creating a library of the possible mutations that can cause cancer, the different mechanisms by which it can develop can be understood. By using the database the specific cancer of a particular patient can be identified and treated accordingly.
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Professor Sir Mike Stratton, director of the Sanger Institute in Cambridge, which led the study, said: “With our ability to sequence the whole genome of very large numbers of cancers we’re moving to essentially a more-or-less comprehensive or complete list of those mutated cancer genes.”