A. Silvério Cabrita’s research while affiliated with University of Coimbra and other places

Breast cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed forms of cancer and one of the most common causes of cancer death in women. The therapy for breast cancer has substantially progressed, but so far and in some types of breast cancer, discrete progress has been made in terms of clinics. Depending on clinical tumor subtype (ER-positive, PR-positive, HER2-positive, and triple negative), the treatment can be done by surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and endocrine therapy. In conventional chemotherapies, several adverse side effects are frequent and, therefore, the development of other treatment strategies to improve the patient's quality of life are essential. This chapter provides a perspective on epidemiology of breast cancer, epigenetic data, tumor transplantation models, genetically engineered models and their applications, their strengths, associated challenges, and future directions. Nevertheless, the choice of the best model of human breast cancer is unanswered. There is still no perfect model for human breast cancer research. Such models remain valuable research tools complemented by clinical data along with ex vivo and in vitro models, and we are set with the knowledge, innovation, and technology to continuously improve them.