Important New Findings on Cancer Risk

The discovery of genetic variations in intercellular adhesion molecules (ICAM) has revealed that individuals with a deleterious version of the ICAM gene region have a 40% higher risk of developing breast or prostate cancer than people without it.

The new data also demonstrated that the breast-cancer risk increases to more than 300% in women with a family history of breast cancer. Due to the high frequency of the variations in the general population, about 34% of people carry two copies of the deleterious version of this region and have the higher risk of developing breast or prostate cancer. The variations were discovered in a genome-wide search for genes involved in breast cancer.

The findings, published in the December 15, 2004, issue of Cancer Research, may lead to important diagnostic and prognostic applications. Since ICAMS are cell surface molecules, they have the potential to offer new therapeutic opportunities for both breast and prostate cancer. The discovery was made by Sequenom, Inc. (San Diego, CA, USA). The company reports that its MassArray system and large collection of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), designed to quickly and accurately perform high throughput genetic analysis, made the discovery possible. Subsequently, the findings were replicated by researchers in Germany and Australia.

"We believe that the identification of the ICAM variations and subsequent development of diagnostic tests have the potential to improve our understanding of cancer risk for millions of people,” commented Toni Schuh, Ph.D., CEO of Sequenom. Originally developed as a genotyping platform, Sequenom's MassArray technology is also being used for microbial typing, mutation detection, gene expression profiling, genetic trace analysis, and epigenetic analysis.




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