deCODE BreastCancer Genetic Diagnostic Test Launched

Filed in archive Diagnostics, Methodologies and Instrumentation , Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics on October 13, 2008

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Dawn Poland

deCoODE Genetics launched deCODE BreastCancerâ„¢, a new non-invasive tool for assessing risk of the common forms of breast cancer.

The deCODE BreastCancerâ„¢ test measures seven widely replicated single-letter variations (SNPs) in the human genome that deCODE and others have linked to risk of breast cancer. These SNPs contribute to the incidence of an estimated 60 percent of all breast cancers. The test integrates data from discovery and replication studies published in major peer-reviewed journals and involving nearly 100,000 breast cancer patients and healthy volunteers from many populations, principally of European descent. deCODE and other organizations are conducting replication studies to validate these markers in populations of other continental ancestries.

Note that this test measure genetic predisposition to breast cancer. It can identify the roughly 5 percent of women who are at a greater than 20 percent lifetime risk of the common forms of breast cancer (about twice the average risk in the general population), and the 1 percent of women whose lifetime risk is roughly 36 percent (about three-times average). These cases are different from the common forms of breast cancer comprising 95 percent of all breast cancers that result from the interplay of genetic as well as environmental and lifestyle factors.