Edited by B.J.A. Furr

2008

It is over one hundred years since the Glaswegian surgeon James Beatson showed that many breast cancers were dependent on the ovaries for their growth. Some time later oestrogen was shown to be the ovarian factor responsible for the development and growth of many breast cancers both in premenopausal and post-menopausal women in whom it was produced from adrenal androgens by peripheral tissues and by the tumours themselves.