Breast cancer is diagnosed daily in 50 women in our country. Every month, this disease claims the lives of about 750 women. This type of cancer rarely develops in young women. The number of cases increases with increasing age, and the peak occurs during the menopause and postmenopausal period. The mortality rate from this disease in Ukraine is quite high. The reasons for this – lack of screening programs for the examination of the population and the late visit of a woman to a doctor.

However, thanks to the development of scientists from the German Research Center for Human and Environmental Health, there is hope for patients with breast cancer. The specialists managed to develop and successfully test a method that will allow growing fully functional mammary glands in the laboratory – practically an ideal object for research into the development of the human body and the search for a remedy against this type of oncology.

Opinions on this matter vary, however from the point of view of nature and rearing of offspring, the mammary glands are the main ones in the female breast, which are sweat glands modified by evolution. They fold into a body surrounded by a layer of fat, consisting of many glandular alveoli that produce milk, and a complex network of excretory ducts, which transport it to the nipple. Production of milk for feeding the baby – complex process that requires a considerable amount of energy. It is even believed that after each "cycle" of breastfeeding, the mammary glands are able to recover due to the stock of stem cells. its main part: the mammary gland with fully functional alveoli and a system of tubules. Curiously, different cultivation conditions led to different results. For example, a denser gel in a petri dish stimulated the invasive nature of the spread of cells in the growing tissue, which is in many ways similar to the processes that develop in oncological diseases. According to scientists, during the adolescent development of the mammary glands in girls, invasive growth is also used by a healthy body.

The proposed technology is quite simple and allows the use of cells from female donors, which are usually discarded, – tissue fragments that are removed during a mastectomy.

"

This is a treasure trove for our experiments, allowing us to trace individual differences in the behavior of stem and other cells during breast development,

" – says one of the co-authors of the work.