Translational research in breast cancer.

The discovery of 25,000 human genes from the Human Genome Project has had a dramatic impact on the translational landscape of human diseases. Nowhere is the impact more apparent than in the field of cancer, specifically breast cancer. Understanding of the malignant process at a molecular level, coupled with the discovery of novel molecular techniques, has shifted the paradigm of treating breast cancer from a clinical, population-based risk assessment model to one based on molecular classification of disease.