Today kicks off National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, as efforts across the country continue to pull together to cope, combat and search for a cure for the disease that is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women.

According to the National Cancer Institute, breast cancer is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year. 

However, hope is always on the horizon with new advancements in treatment, research and drugs.

"Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, but when found and treated before it has spread beyond the breast, the 5-year survival rate is nearly 99 percent," NCI adds.

A new Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drug that just came on the market yesterday has many excited about its pre-surgical approach at targeting the disease that could possibly lead to less masectomies.

"Perjeta, the biotech drug from Roche, has become the first medicine approved to treat breast cancer before surgery, offering an earlier approach against one of the deadliest forms of the disease," CBS News reports.

The FDA-approved drug would be most beneficial for "women with a form of early-stage breast cancer who face a high risk of having their cancer spread to other parts of the body."

"Surgery to remove tumors is usually the first step in treating most forms of cancer," CBS News added. "Perjeta is the first drug to be approved as a pre-surgical step."

"We are seeing a significant shift in the treatment paradigm for early stage breast cancer," Dr. Richard Pazdur, director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.

"By making effective therapies available to high-risk patients in the earliest disease setting, we may delay or prevent cancer recurrences."

Besides Perjeta, research is always being conducted and continues to be on the forefront of Susan G. Komen's mission. 

The foundation, that has proven to be a powerhouse in the breast cancer awareness movement, recently teamed up with the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation and the Young Survival Coalition conduct the Health of Women (HOW) breast cancer study.

HOW was developed by Dr. Love and Dr. Leslie Bernstein in 2012 as a means of identifying the causes of, and prevention strategies for, breast cancer.

"The HOW project is precisely the kind of large-scale, long-term study we need to identify patterns common to breast cancer patients - medical history, family history, geographic location, reproductive history, ethnicity or lifestyle, for example. Dr. Love is 'democratizing' the research by inviting everyone - male, female, old, young, breast cancer survivor or not - to participate in the HOW study. Even if you are not a breast cancer patient, comparing information about you can help us identify areas which make a person at greater risk for developing breast cancer," Dr. Judy Salerno, President and CEO, Susan G. Komen.

Salerno also wants to help identify other issues that breast cancer patients face while undergoing treatment.

"Our second objective is aimed at improving breast cancer treatment by identifying issues that breast cancer survivors are facing today. These include side effects of current treatments such as lymphedema, depression, mobility issues, 'chemo brain,' loss of sexual appetite, etc. Almost every breast cancer survivor knows of these side effects, but many don't talk about them," she explained.