According to a study of more than 65,000 women, a test for a wide range of genetic risk factors could improve doctors’ ability to work out which women are at increased risk of developing breast cancer.
This study, the most definitive of its type conducted so far, was funded by a range of organisations including Cancer Research UK, Breakthrough Breast Cancer, Genome Canada, Génome Québec, the ministère de l’Économie, de l’Innovation et des Exportations, the Québec Breast Cancer Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), was published on April 9, 2015 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Using one of the world’s biggest databases of genetic information – called the Collaborative Oncological Gene-Environment Study (COGS) – the researchers came up with a ‘score’ for each woman based on the letters they had in each of the 77 positions of their DNA code.
Pr. Jacques Simard, researcher at the Centre de recherché du CHU de Québec and Canada Research Chair in oncogenetics of Université Laval, is co-author of the study and had an active participation in the discovery of these genetic variations linked to breast cancer. Thanks to his project, PERSPECTIVE, he paves the way to an optimal breast cancer screening strategy. To learn more on his research project, click here.