The cancer that's hard to detect

More difficult to notice and poorly understood, lobular breast cancer is finally coming under the spotlight

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Lobular breast cancer, also known as invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC), is more common than ovarian and skin cancer yet there is little awareness of it.

According to Cancer Research UK, one in seven women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime and around 15% of those will have ILC.

ILC is different to the most common form of ductal breast cancer. Instead of starting in the breast ducts, it starts in the lobules, the glands that produce milk, and grows in a spider's web pattern. Cancer cells infect the tissue around the glands and rarely show in lumps, so it is harder to spot and likely to be diagnosed later.

At least a fifth of ILC cases return years later. When this happens, the cancer becomes even harder to treat. And yet it's an under-diagnosed subtype of breast cancer that is underfunded and poorly understood.