The statistics are well worn: breast cancer will affect more than one in nine women in Britain at some stage in their life, and kills nearly 13,000 every year. Depressing facts, to be sure, but good news is on the way. New medical studies show that new drugs - or old drugs used in new ways - can offer hope to those who suffer from the condition. This week's happy furore is over a zippy new drug called anastrozole, which appears to be far superior to tamoxifen, the current gold-standard treatment, which has been used for over 20 years to treat early breast cancer.

And it's not just anastrozole (which is marketed under the name Arimidex). A raft of modern drugs introduced in the past decade to treat advanced breast cancer - when the disease is recurring or spreading to other organs - may also be used to treat the early stages of the disease, as soon as the surgery to remove lumps is over. Evidence suggests that many lives could be saved, and Dr Stephen Johnson of the Breast Cancer Campaign describes one of these new treatments, Herceptin, as the "biggest advance in the last quarter-century".

Much of the current excitement is about a new type of hormone therapy that prevents oestrogen from being produced in the first place. Several variants of these drugs, known as aromatase inhibitors, have shown considerable promise for treating early stage breast cancers, one of which is anastrozole.

The science shows that these drugs work - but many of them are not yet widely available on the NHS. The main reason? Cost. A course of the intravenous drug Herceptin costs around £20,000, while five years' worth of tamoxifen costs just £360. The government's medicines watchdog, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, is currently reviewing its advice to hospitals. Dr Johnson expects a number of the new alternatives to be available by the end of the year - not a moment too soon for the sufferers.

So what are these new wonder treatments? Breast cancer is treated with a combination of surgery, radiotherapy and drugs. These drugs fall into three categories: hormone treatments (which stop oestrogen from stimulating cancer cells), targeted therapy (which attacks the characteristics of certain types of cancer), and chemotherapy (which stops cancer cells from dividing). The table below gives the lowdown on the main drugs making waves just now.

· Breast Cancer Campaign: www.breastcancercampaign.org

Cancer Research UK: www.cancerhelp.org.uk