Laboratory Corporation of America® Holdings, Burlington, NC offers OvaSure™, an ovarian cancer-screening test to assess the presence of early-stage ovarian cancer in high-risk women.
In a recent study of high-risk and average-risk subjects, the blood test, using six biomarkers and research conducted at Yale University School of Medicine, was shown to discriminate between disease-free women and ovarian-cancer patients (stage I-IV) with high specificity (99.4%) and sensitivity (95.3%). Additional studies performed at Yale University School of Medicine demonstrate comparable findings.
"LabCorp is pleased to offer for high-risk women the OvaSure test to enhance the potential of detecting and treating ovarian cancer in its early or localized stage when the likelihood of survival is greatest," said Myla P. Lai-Goldman, MD, executive VP and chief medical officer for the company.
Estimates for 2008 indicate 21,650 women will be newly diagnosed with ovarian cancer and some 15,520 women will die from the disease. Despite being one-eighth as common as breast cancer, it is three times more lethal. If ovarian cancer is diagnosed and treated at the localized stage, the 5-year survival rate is 92%; unfortunately, only 19% of all cases are found at the localized stage. Most women have their ovarian cancer detected at the regional or distant stage when the 5-year survival rates are 71% and 30% respectively.
"I am pleased that this test is available to help physicians detect and treat ovarian cancer in its earliest stages," said Gil Mor, MD, associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale and a member of Yale Cancer Center. "Our team is proud that our research may help play a role in higher survival rates for women with this disease."
LabCorp offers clinical assays ranging from routine blood analyses to HIV and genomic testing. Its clients include physicians, government agencies, managed-care organizations, hospitals, clinical labs, and pharmaceutical companies.
