Scottish breast cancer patients will be the first in the UK to get approval for a breakthrough drug which targets the disease when it spreads to the brain.
It is understood 40 women per year with the condition will benefit from Tucatinib.
Until now clinical research didn’t use women who have already got brain metastises.
But the drug produced by Seagen UK Ltd, is the first to successfully trial and give hope to sufferers of HER2-postive breast cancer.
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Research shows it can reduce the risk of death by 52 per cent and extended overall survival by six months.
The Scottish Medicines Consortium approved the drug yesterday.
Cancer patient Lesley Stephen, 56, was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2014. It was already in her liver, lungs and bones but a year later it spread to her brain.
She said: "I used to joke my cancer had moved faster than Usain Bolt on a good day but it was really no laughing matter."
Lesley was told she just had two to three years to live but when the cancer moved to her brain a year later she thought there was no hope.
Her doctor had told her to go home and out her affairs in order because prognosis is very poor.
She had 10 sessions of Whole Brain Radiotherapy where she says her brain was "frazzled".
Scottish breast cancer patients will be the first in the UK to get approval for a breakthrough drug which targets the disease when it spreads to the brain.
