BCAN-RAY will explore the risk factors most common in women diagnosed with breast cancer in their 30s and will use this to build a model to identify potential high-risk women, who could then have access to early screenings.

The study aims to recruit 1,000 women aged between 30 and 39: of those participants, 250 will have been diagnosed with breast cancer with no family history of the disease, while the remaining 750 will not have had breast cancer, and have no family history of the disease.

The first recruit is 33-year-old Catherine Craven-Howe, who underwent a low-dose risk assessment mammogram and provided a saliva sample in her initial appointment as part of the trial.

“Although I don’t have breast cancer myself and I don’t have a history of it in my family, I know just how important clinical trials and research are,” she said. “I hope my participation will help devise a simple test to detect the likelihood of breast cancer for young women like me in the future.”

Saliva samples could help experts pinpoint certain types and patterns of genes that might raise a woman’s risk of breast cancer. Other factors that the researchers might consider will include when a woman’s periods started, alcohol consumption, breast tissue density and use of the contraceptive pill.

A new breast cancer research project has been launched in Sarah Harding’s memory