Healthy women who carry cancer-causing genes could be given drugs that are normally used to treat advanced breast cancer as a preventive measure, a study has suggested.
About one in 400 people carry a faulty BRCA gene mutation, which puts them at a high risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. Patients with the mutation can opt to have a preventive mastectomy to remove their breasts, as the actress Angelina Jolie did in 2013.
The new study by the University of Cambridge found that immunotherapy cancer drugs could also be used as a preventive measure in future, providing an alternative to surgery.
In a breakthrough, scientists discovered that immune cells in the breast tissue of healthy women carrying faulty BRCA1 (breast cancer 1) or BRCA2
