Our hope for the future lies in research. Research covers all areas of breast cancer, from its causes and its prevention to its treatment. The keys to the future should involve improved prevention, easier diagnosis, more precise categorization of types (threatening versus nonthreatening cancers), and better treatments. The major problem with preventing breast cancer is that we are not yet very good at identifying who will and who won't get it. The good news is that these days changes come fast in breast cancer research. The ultimate hope lies not in the cure of breast cancer, but in breast cancer prevention. For now, it is exciting to learn that new trends and clinical treatments that more accurately target certain kinds of cancer are available, and that new clinical trials of an experimental breast cancer vaccine were expected to begin in the spring of 2009.