A multisite team of researchers affiliated with the groundbreaking Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC) has uncovered six new genetic markers linked to the risk of developing ovarian cancer.
For this new study, which appears in Nature Genetics, the researchers compared genetic markers among more than 15,000 women with ovarian cancer and more than 30,000 healthy women. The six new markers they found may help to improve risk-prediction models used to identify those women who are at greatest risk for developing this often-deadly disease, says Kirsten Moysich, PhD, MS, Professor of Oncology in the departments of Cancer Prevention and Control and Immunology and one of four study co-authors from Roswell Park.
“If we can identify women who are at very high risk independent of known genetic markers such as BRCA1 and BRCA2,” Moysich says, “those women can consider risk-reducing prophylactic surgery. This is particularly important for ovarian cancer because this disease is often detected in advanced stages, for which treatment outcomes are often very poor.”
The study, “Identification of six new susceptibility loci for invasive epithelial ovarian cancer,” is available here.
Annie Deck-Miller, Senior Media Relations Manager
716-845-8593; annie.deck-miller@roswellpark.org