By Ben Hirschler

LONDON (Reuters) - New research has nearly doubled the number of genetic variations implicated in breast, prostate and ovarian cancer, offering fresh avenues for screening at-risk patients and, potentially, developing better drugs.

The bumper haul of 74 gene changes that can increase risks for the three hormone-related cancers, announced by scientists on Wednesday, is the result of the largest ever study of its kind.

It follows an international project to analyze the DNA of more than 200,000 people - half of them with cancer and half from the general population - to find alterations that are more common in individuals with the disease.

Although each gene variation increases cancer risk by only a small amount, scientists calculate that the 1 percent of men carrying lots of the alterations could have a 50 percent increased risk of developing prostate cancer.

Women with multiple variants could see their risk of breast cancer increase by 30 percent.

Doug Easton of the University of Cambridge, one of the cancer researchers who led the work, said the batch of new genetic discoveries meant medical experts would be able to develop new cancer screening programs.

This will take time, since more research is needed to develop diagnostic tools.

"I would think that within five to 10 years this might be being used commonly, if not in a very widespread population base," said Paul Pharoah, also of the University of Cambridge.

Initially, the additional screening is likely to be targeted at patients with established cancer risk factors, such as carriers of BRCA gene faults. Women with BRCA faults are known to be at greater risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.

Read more:
Record gene haul points to better cancer screening

Comments are closed.