A teenager believes he has solved the problem of how to make a deadly form of breast cancer more treatable.

Around 7,500 women each year are diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, a type of disease which does not respond to today's most effective drugs.

Many breast cancers are driven by oestrogen, progesterone or growth chemicals so drugs that can block those fuels, such as tamoxifen, make effective treatments.

However triple negative breast cancer does not have receptors and it can only be treated with a gruelling combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy which lowers the chance of survival.

But a 16-year-old boy from Epsom, Surrey, believes he may have the answer. Krtin Nithiyandam thinks he has devised a way to turn the most deadly form of triple negative breast cancer into a kind which responds to drugs.

Scientists have known for some time that some women with triple negative cancer respond very well to treatment while others quickly decline. The problem lies in whether the cancer cells are ‘differentiated’ or not. Differentiated means they look more like healthy cells and they tend to grow and multiply quite slowly, and are less aggressive.