After rising for more than two decades, the incidence of breast cancer in the United States decreased sharply in 2003 and remained low for another year, researchers are reporting.

The researchers attribute the drop to a decrease in the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) that occurred at about the same time. Starting in mid-2002, millions of women stopped using HRT after an NIH study linked certain hormones to health risks, including breast cancer. Read more ¹  

It was nearly 20 years ago when I first came to NCI, spending 2 years conducting basic research on lung cancer at the U.S. National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. I eventually took a post abroad in the Netherlands, but I am elated to return to NCI as the new chief of the Medical Oncology Branch in the Center for Cancer Research ² (CCR).

I greatly enjoyed my 16-year tenure at the Free University Hospital in Amsterdam. But it is a welcome opportunity to once again be part of NCI and its efforts to spearhead continued advances in cancer research and to train the next generation of cancer researchers. Read more ³  

The NCI Cancer Bulletin is produced by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). NCI, which was established in 1937, leads the national effort to eliminate the suffering and death due to cancer. Through basic, clinical, and population-based biomedical research and training, NCI conducts and supports research that will lead to a future in which we can identify the environmental and genetic causes of cancer, prevent cancer before it starts, identify cancers that do develop at the earliest stage, eliminate cancers through innovative treatment interventions, and biologically control those cancers that we cannot eliminate so they become manageable, chronic diseases. For more information on cancer, call 1-800-4-CANCER or visit http://www.cancer.gov. NCI Cancer Bulletin staff can be reached at ncicancerbulletin@mail.nih.gov.