Breast cancer continues to be a global health crisis. In 2018, there were an estimated 2.1 million new cases of breast cancer worldwide. In the United States alone, another life is lost to breast cancer every 15 minutes. Breast cancer comes in several forms, with triple-negative breast cancer being the most aggressive and hardest to treat. In all subtypes, once the cancer has metastasized, or spread from the breast to other organs, the odds are survival are significantly lower. These advanced breast cancers are also less likely to respond to traditional treatments.
New strategies are urgently needed to improve breast cancer care and increase patient survival. To that end, immunotherapy—a new class of treatments that help patients’ immune systems fight cancer—is one avenue that appears especially promising for patients.
Avacta Group Plc (LON:AVCT) offers reagents and therapeutics based on Affimer technology for diagnostic and research applications in the United Kingdom. The company’s custom Affimer products are also used in drugs and biomarkers discovery in biotech research and development.