MyPeBS (My Personal Breast Screening) is an EU-funded project that aims to assess the value of personalised breast cancer screening for women aged 40 to 70 in Europe.

MyPeBS is based on a large international clinical study that compares current screening with a new personalised screening approach based on estimating the individual risk of developing breast cancer in the coming years. This new strategy proposes to adapt the screening schedule to each woman’s individual risk.

Women who volunteer to participate in the study are randomly assigned to two groups. In the first, they follow the standard screening during the 4 years of participation in the study; in the second, they follow their personalised screening schedule, established according to their own risk of developing breast cancer.

Want to know more on the MyPeBS? Check out the MyPeBS project overview!

Investigate a new breast screening strategy

To date, apart from a few very rare situations, age is the only factor taken into account when inviting women in the general population to have a mammogram: this “one size fits all” strategy is used by all organized breast cancer screening programs around the world.

However, not all women are the same: each woman has her own risk of developing breast cancer, depending on her genetic factors, her family history of cancer or her hormonal status.

New scientific data suggest that a new screening strategy, based on the estimation of individual breast cancer risk, may have a better benefit/risk ratio for all women than current standard screening.

The MyPeBS study is implemented to answer this public health issue.

Indeed, compared to the current standard screening which offers mammograms every 2 years to all women over a certain age, adapting the strategy (frequency of mammography and/or MRI) to the estimated risk of breast cancer could offer more advantages (earlier detection of breast cancer in women at higher than average risk) and less disadvantages (reduction of the disadvantages associated with screening by mammography in women at lower risk).

This individual risk is assessed by their personal and family history but also by a saliva test for genotyping (analysis of 313 DNA polymorphisms integrated into a risk score). Depending on the final result of the assessment of her risk of invasive breast cancer, the woman will then be offered a personalised program with mammograms and/or MRIs more or less frequently.

Learn more about breast cancer screening here. 

About thirty partners, each with an essential role

MyPeBS is implemented by nearly 30 partner organizations in Italy, France, Israel, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands and the United States. To conduct the clinical study, MyPeBS relies on a network of several hundred investigator centres, involving more than a thousand doctors or health and research professionals.

Learn more about the project partners here.

ECL is directly involved in work package 6 (communication), leading the specific task to communicate the project to the general public, and will also contribute to the work packages assessing psycho-social impact of risk-stratification and recommendations for policy-makers.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 755394

Find out more about the European H2020 programme

Find all the information about the MyPeBS project