Breast cancer remains a common and frequently fatal disease, the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women and the second ranking cause of cancer death in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. More than 1.2 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer annually worldwide.

In developed countries, most patients (>80%) with breast cancer present with operable disease that can apparently be entirely resected surgically.

About half of these patients eventually relapse, and when these are added to those initially presenting with primary advanced disease, this means that most patients with breast cancer ultimately require treatment for advanced disease. Clinical breast cancer research has focused on effective methods to detect breast cancer at its earliest stages and on standardized treatment to cure the disease after diagnosis. However, despite advances in these areas, one third of all women in North America who develop breast cancer will die of the disease.