Tickled Pink is a founding funder of Breast Cancer Now’s Biobank. It’s a special place that stores samples of breast cancer tissue, blood and patient data for scientists to use in research projects. To date it’s collected over 148,000 samples and has already helped make 200 discoveries about breast cancer! That’s not just smart, that’s Tickled Pink!  

The Biobank has been an invaluable resource for breast cancer researchers like Professor Claude Chelala.  

Professor Chelala found that women of African or South Asian ancestry were diagnosed with breast cancer earlier (7 and 5 years respectively) and died younger (13 and 9 years respectively) than women of European ancestry. They used clinical and genetic data from over 7000 women with breast cancer, including data from the Breast Cancer Now Biobank. It was one of the largest studies of its kind that looked into these inequalities.

“The Biobank underpinned this research by enabling access to high-quality, well-annotated biological samples and rich clinical data that reflect patient diversity.” – Professor Claude Chelala.

This helped her team carry out more inclusive analysis and generate insights that could help make sure discoveries benefit more patients.

Asda Tickled Pink is proud to fully fund the Breast Cancer Now research unit at King’s College London. That’s 15 incredible scientists working across 6 teams. It’s a seriously smart research unit that’s dedicated to researching triple negative breast cancer – one of the hardest types of breast cancer to treat.

We’ve funded the Research Unit since 2022 investing over £4m in that time. During that period, they’ve done some really clever stuff, including:

• New targets. Breast Cancer Now researchers at the unit discovered a ‘cancer addiction gene’ and they found it could be a target to treat the disease.

• AI to predict spread. This one really is at the cutting edge. Scientists developed an AI model that can predict if triple negative breast cancer will spread or not.

When you’re facing a challenge as tough as triple negative breast cancer, every breakthrough matters. The work happening at the Breast Cancer Now Research Unit is helping researchers understand this disease better, one discovery at a time, and bringing us closer to better

Asda Tickled Pink also funds research for CoppaFeel!, like supporting their work with the University of Nottingham to explore and understand breast referral behaviours in primary care in women 35 and under. This research project will help reduce health inequities in primary care through training and support for Healthcare Professionals highlighting barriers to early diagnosis for young women. The results will inform some of CoppaFeel!'s work with the Government and the NHS to improve experiences and outcomes for young people. 

“It is a real privilege to get this opportunity to make a difference. The team at CoppaFeel! is doing important work and the evidence tells us that early detection in breast cancer is vital to achieve better health outcomes. We hope the findings from this project, which is exploring the experiences of women going to see their GP with breast-related health concerns, will provide us with insights that can help improve the quality of referrals to secondary care for women with suspected breast cancer.”

Beth Richmond, PhD student at University of Nottingham working on the research.