OncoVue: New test to establish breast cancer

California, United States, December 13: A new test named OncoVue that takes into consideration 19 genesdefine linked to breast cancerdefine risk has been developed by researchers.

Factors such as breast density and tumor size may provide valuable inputs to envisage breast cancerdefine risk, reappearance risk and reaction to cancer treatment, researchers stated.

As of now, the Gail model is used to establish a woman's likelihood of developing breast cancer. This model takes into consideration merely five factors that indicate breast cancer risk.

Talking of the limitations of the Gail model, Jennifer Eng-Wong, MD, a breast cancer specialist at Georgetown University Hospital, said, "We know the Gail model is good at predicting risk of breast cancer within a population, but on an individual level, it's not much better than a flip of a coin."

The OncoVue model not only uses the information evaluated by the Gail model but also assesses the influence of genetic variations in an individual. The model thus is likely to be far more superior to the Gail model.

A study was conducted on 346 women. Out of these, 177 did not suffer from breast cancer, while breast cancer had been detected in 169 of them between 1997 and 1999. The sample was chosen from the Marin County, California as the average breast cancer rates are higher there. The cell samples from the mouth were utilized to look at the genetic patterns.

Results were pretty encouraging as the OncoVue model identified 56 cases of breast cancer vis-à-vis 37 for the Gail model. That turns out to be a 51 percent improvement by the OncoVue model.

Eldon Jupe, PhD, vice president at InterGenetics Inc, was aware of the limitations of the test. She averred, "At this point, no test is going to be 100 percent accurate as we don't know all the risk factors, all the genesdefine, involved in breast cancer."

The research was presented at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.