From combining treatments in unprecedented ways to deploying artificial intelligence for personalised medicine, a raft of new advances in the fight against cancer have been presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), which ends on Tuesday.
Here are some of the big announcements made at the five-day conference held in the Spanish city of Barcelona, which brought together 30,000 specialist doctors and researchers from around the world.
– Breastfeeding after cancer –
Women who breastfeed after receiving treatment for breast cancer do not have a higher risk of their cancer returning or of getting new tumours, according to two international studies presented at the conference.
This was also true for women carrying a genetic mutation called BRCA, which significantly increases the chance of developing breast cancer, the research found.
There had previously been concerns about pregnancy and breastfeeding after women had been diagnosed with breast cancer, because both can affect hormone levels.
“These …