Laboratory Corp of America(R) Holdings, Burlington, NC reports that Yale University released the results of its Phase II study on a blood test to detect early-stage ovarian cancer. Using six biomarkers, the test discriminates between disease-free women and ovarian cancer patients (stage I-IV) with high specificity (99.4%) and sensitivity (95.3%).
A Phase III trial is under way and should be completed in a few months. Initial studies are focused on women who have an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer.
Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women in the United States and is the leading cause of gynecologic cancer deaths. Despite being one-tenth as common as breast cancer, it is three times more lethal, and the average woman carries a 1:70 lifetime risk of being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. This year, approximately 20,180 women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and 15,310 will die from the disease.
"The ability to recognize almost 100% of new tumors will have a major impact on the high death rates of this cancer," said Gil Mor, associate professor of reproductive sciences at the medical school and lead researcher of the study. "While initial studies are focused on women with increased risk, we hope this test will eventually become the standard of care for women having routine examinations."
LabCorp signed an exclusive license agreement with Yale in 2006 to commercialize the university’s blood testing technology for ovarian cancer. For more information on the Phase III trials, visit [removed]Yale’s Web site[/removed].
