A team of scientists from Montreal and California has found a way to reverse breast cancer in lab mice, paving the way for drugs that could "potentially eradicate" the disease that kills one woman in North America every 10 minutes.

Researchers from McGill University and the University of California at Davis say they have identified a genetic "switch" in mice that can make the cancer active or inactive at will.

They made the announcement at a conference of the International Association for Breast Cancer Research, meeting in Sacramento, Calif. Monday.

The gene at the centre of the study is known as beta-1 integrin. It regulates the growth of breast tissue. If it malfunctions, it can directly cause breast tumours.

Scientists stopped the gene from working in mice that were genetically engineered to be prone to breast cancer. They also removed it from mice with breast cancer. In both cases, it halted the growth of the tumours.

The research has only been demonstrated in animal models and researchers do not yet know how it would translate to humans. While the finding isn't a cure, it could eventually pave the way for drugs that would work in humans.

It would also point to "personalized" breast cancer treatment, says William Muller, the lead author of the study and a biochemistry professor at McGill University.

"We now have a good target for biological drug development, and the challenge now is to develop an agent that can block its activity," he said. 

"We're extremely encouraged that we have been able to demonstrate in laboratory animals that we can make mammary cancers essentially disappear by reversing just one mutation," added fellow researcher Lewis Chodash of the University of Pennsylvania. 

The technique has long been theory in cancer research. With this hard evidence, the race is now on to develop drugs that can switch off the gene in humans.

It's not clear that the finding will make existing tumours disappear, but oncologist Dr. Gerald Batist says at least they wouldn't grow any further.

"You may be able to affect how agressive it is, whether it moves into other tissues, spreads, what we call 'metastisizes;' that's what kills," he says.

For breast cancer survivors like Marilyn Fichman, the discovery offers a chance others won't have to go through what she went through.

"We are not mice, and maybe it's not tomorrow, but that doesn't matter. As long as we're making progress in the right direction, this is terrific," she says.

According to the Breast Cancer Society of Canada, more than 500,000 people will die from breast cancer, or one every 10 minutes. Family history of breast cancer significantly increases one's risk, though 70 per cent of women diagnosed with breast cancer had no known risk factors.