In the 1970s only 40% of women diagnosed with breast cancer could expect to survive for 10 years or more. Today that figure is over 75%. Screening and early diagnosis have played a part, but one of the key reasons for the improvement is the drug tamoxifen, which massively reduces the risk of cancer recurring after surgery.
The British-American pharmacologist Craig Jordan, who has died aged 76, was the first to show that tamoxifen could stop tumours growing by blocking the female hormone oestrogen from locking on to cells in the breast at specific sites called oestrogen receptors.
