New test could eliminate chemo for many breast cancer patients
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Millions of people with breast cancer could safely avoid chemotherapy as scientists have developed a groundbreaking DNA test. We speak to an oncologist who has been involved in the research and a woman who has gone through chemotherapy after a breast cancer diagnosis.
Also on the programme: we hear from the Romanian president on the Russian drone that hit an apartment block in the east of the country; and a preview of tonight's Champions League football final between Paris St Germain and the London club Arsenal.
(Photo: A nurse provides assistance to a patient undergoing a mammogram in a modern medical facility. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.6 | Hello and welcome to News Hour from the World Service of the BBC, live from London, with Owen |
| 0:15.7 | Bennett Jones today. And good news on the breast cancer front for many women who may no longer need to undergo chemotherapy. |
| 0:23.7 | Also coming up, NATO member states are assessing how to improve their defences against drones |
| 0:29.6 | after one hit an apartment complex in the Romanian city of Galatz on Thursday night. |
| 0:35.9 | Romania's president gave us an interview, tells us there's no doubt the drone did come from |
| 0:40.7 | Russia. |
| 0:41.5 | It's sure because we had another one four or five weeks ago that didn't explode. |
| 0:47.8 | We compared both drones and they are completely identical. |
| 0:52.7 | More from Romania's president, Nika Shoredan, in around half an hour's time. |
| 0:57.7 | There are no reliable statistics for how many women have chemotherapy for breast cancer each year, |
| 1:04.1 | but it will run certainly into the hundreds of thousands. |
| 1:08.9 | And as anyone who has seen chemo close up knows, it is a brutal |
| 1:13.3 | treatment. Well, the need for that chemo in many breast cancer cases may be coming to an end. |
| 1:19.2 | Chemo significantly reduces the risk of a recurring cancer. But if you don't have the kind of |
| 1:24.9 | cancer that recurs, there's no point having the chemo. |
| 1:34.7 | In this new breakthrough, scientists have come up with a test that can work out which kind of tumour you have very early. |
| 1:42.0 | Professor David Miles is a consultant oncologist at the Mount Vernon Cancer Centre in London. |
| 1:46.0 | The centre has been involved in this research and he has over 20 years experience in the field. So how big a breakthrough is this? I think this is a practice-changing |
| 1:52.2 | breakthrough. This is a study that was initiated in the UK at Mount Vernon at UCLA with |
| 1:58.5 | colleagues of ours, including many patients over many years. |
| 2:02.9 | And what this study will allow us to do is to say to patients that they can safely avoid the |
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