Scientists at Purdue University and France’s Institut de Cancérologie de L’Ouest (ICO) have discovered that glyphosate, the primary ingredient in some widely used herbicides and pesticides, can lead to breast cancer under certain conditions. The discovery is another step forward when it comes to determining how cancer starts, and how it can be prevented.

Scientists know that the solution to preventing breast cancer won’t come easily, but a collaborative team of scientists at Purdue University and the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)/Institut de Cancérologie de L’Ouest (ICO) in Nantes, France, say they’ve recently discovered one of the missing pieces of the puzzle when it comes to cancer prevention. 

The Purdue Center for Cancer Research, working with ICO, the Cancer Center for Western France, as part of a memorandum of agreement with the Purdue-led International Breast Cancer and Nutrition (IBCN) initiative, discovered that glyphosate, the primary ingredient in widespread herbicides, can lead to mammary cancer when combined with another risk factor. The work was published in Frontiers in Genetics.