The profits from Sarah Harding’s last single will be used to fund research at the cancer treatment centre that cared for the Girls Aloud star.

Harding’s track, “Wear It Like a Crown”, reached the top of the iTunes chart in March. All proceeds will go to the Christie NHS foundation, which runs Manchester’s Christie hospital.

The money will be used to fund research into preventing breast cancer among women aged 30-39 who have no family history of the disease. Dr Sacha Howell, who treated Harding, will lead the research.

A hospital spokesperson BBC News: “Sarah was extremely passionate about breast cancer research and spoke often of the importance of funding this.”

Harding’s mother announced last week that the singer had died of breast cancer aged 39.

The Girls Aloud star had revealed last year that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, with the disease advancing to other parts of her body.

Writing in her memoir Hear Me Out earlier this year, Harding revealed that she had undergone a mastectomy and intensive chemotherapy following her diagnosis.

While it initially “seemed like the chemo was working”, she wrote, the cancer spread further with a secondary tumour growing on either the base of her spine or her brain.

She also revealed that Christmas 2020 was “probably my last” and that she had nearly died of sepsis in hospital, having to be put into a coma for two weeks.