Tickled Pink products on sale
in stores from the
6th September

Asda launched the Tickled Pink campaign back in 1996 to raise money to help improve the lives of people with breast cancer, both now and in the future. Entering its 14th year, Asda's Tickled Pink campaign benefits two breast cancer charities - Breast Cancer Care and Breast Cancer Campaign and since it started, our work has raised over £21 million.


Professor Graham Pockley

(University of Sheffield)

The immune system recognises ‘foreign’ germs that invade the body and destroys them before they can cause infections such as colds and flu. As breast cancer cells are not outside invaders but our own breast cells that no longer work properly, the system has trouble recognising and killing them. This project will investigate how breast cancers protect themselves from the immune system, so that scientists can develop ways to overcome this protection to treat the disease.

Learning more about how cancer cells avoid being destroyed by the immune system will help scientists devise ways to prevent this from happening. This could lead to brand new treatments that use our own immune system to target and fight breast cancer.

Posted in:  

Breast Cancer Campaign - North

Dr Smith

Dr Laura Smith

(University of Leeds)

Previous research has shown that breast cancer cells which are difficult to destroy with radiotherapy contain reduced amounts of molecules called GRP78, PSMD9 and DARS.

Dr Smith aims to find out what role these molecules play in preventing radiotherapy from working in breast cancer.

This research could bring us closer to being able to predict which patients won’t benefit from radiotherapy before their course starts and preventing them from undergoing unnecessary treatment.

Posted in:  

Breast Cancer Campaign - North

Dr Speirs

Dr Valerie Speirs

(University of Leeds)

Male breast cancer is rare but unlike female breast cancer where mortality rates have decreased over the last 20 years, mortality rates from male breast cancer have remained almost constant.

Research into male breast cancer has been hampered due to small numbers of men with breast cancer appearing in any one hospital, making studies on large numbers of individuals impossible.

The aim of this study is to collect together a large number of breast cancer samples from around 300 men. These samples will be studied for biomarkers which have known prognostic value in female breast cancer such as HER2. The samples collected will be available to other scientists who wish to study other relevant proteins.

Posted in:  

Breast Cancer Campaign - North

Professor Lewis

Professor Claire Lewis

(University of Sheffield)

For a breast cancer tumour to grow above the size of a pinhead it must establish a blood supply that will provide the nutrients needed for growth. This process is called angiogenesis and scientists are slowly unravelling how it happens.

If we can find out which cells and molecules are important to the process, then scientists will be able to design drugs against it, thus starving and killing the cancer. This project will investigate how white blood cells called monocytes, make angiogenesis happen in breast tumours and will open the doors to a new way of effectively treating breast cancer.

Posted in:  

Breast Cancer Campaign - North