A World-leading cancer expert, Chair in Molecular Oncology at the University of Aberdeen.

As a cancer biologist, one of her main research interests is in understanding the biology of male breast cancer. She has been studying this for several years and has established one of the largest collections of male breast cancer in the world.

Professor Speirs says “For decades male breast cancer has been understudied, and because men tend to visit their GP much later with symptoms the outcome for men can be worse than women. However, things are starting to change and there has been real progress in this area over the last decade. 

Male breast cancer, while still rare, is becoming increasingly diagnosed, yet men are treated in exactly the same way as women.  

Scientists are now starting to work more collaboratively to establish bigger collections of male breast cancer samples which allow us to study this in more detail and extend our work beyond just observational findings which can be one of the disadvantages of studying a rare illness. 

Our work has identified gaps that need to be filled, which in the long term could eventually improve the standard of care, and that’s something that men really want.