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Gene Screen Best at Finding Breast Cancer

Posted on: Friday, 14 July 2006, 12:00 CDT

A new gene screening test identifies breast-cancer cells twice as accurately as visual pathological exams.

The test, the quantitative multiplex methylation-specific PCR (QM-MSP), was developed by scientists at Johns Hopkins University to screen body fluids for certain types of cancer.

Pathologists depend on spotting abnormal cell shapes for their diagnosis. In a test of the system, pathologists accurately identified cancer cells in the breast fluid of high-risk or previously diagnosed breast-cancer patients around 33 percent of the time, but QM-MSP was able to find evidence of malignancy in 71 percent of the samples.

Sara Sukumar and Mary Jo Fackler, the Johns Hopkins team's leaders, noted that cancer cells have abnormally high levels of methylation, the replacement of a hydrogen atom by a methyl group under the influence of enzymes that can, among other things, turn genes on and off and stop the formation of critical proteins in cells.

QM-MSP works by measuring the amount of methylation on genes associated with specific cancers. Levels above a certain threshold indicate that the cell is probably malignant.

Writing in the June 1 issue of Clinical Cancer Research, the study authors said QM-MSP could also be used to detect cancer in any part of the body that easily yields fluid, such as the lungs, head and neck, pancreas, and cervix.

Source: United Press International

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