Scientists developing single test to detect risk of four cancers in women

Ovarian cancer is responsible for the largest proportion of deaths associated with gynaecological cancers. Currently, 75% of ovarian cancers are diagnosed at a late stage, when the tumours have spread. Being able to detect the disease earlier may improve treatment outcomes.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women and is usually detected using mammography followed by a biopsy.

Researchers used cervical cell samples from 242 women with ovarian cancer and 869 without. They then measured 14,000 epigenetic changes and identified a unique DNA signature that could be used to spot or predict the presence of ovarian cancer.

This enabled them to identify 71.4% of women under 50 and 54.5% of women over 50 with ovarian cancers with 75% specificity. The findings were further validated in an additional cohort of women, where 47 had ovarian cancer and 227 did not.

In the second study, researchers analysed epigenetic changes in cervical cell samples from 329 women with breast cancer with a poor prognosis and 869 women without the disease. They were able to identify women with breast cancer based on a unique epigenetic signature. The finding was confirmed in a smaller set of samples from 113 breast cancer patients and 225 women without breast cancer.

In the future, the Eve Appeal said, women could get separate risk scores for each of the four cancers. Those with high scores could be offered more active monitoring, regular mammograms, risk-reducing surgery, or therapeutics, the charity said.

Widschwendter cautioned that further research and large-scale prospective clinical trials would be needed to confirm the tests could effectively predict the likelihood of women developing cancer.