Ovarian Cancer Assay Outperforms Traditional Tests in Early Disease Detection

Globally, ovarian cancer is one of the deadliest cancers affecting women. Traditionally, early diagnosis of ovarian cancer has been challenging. Many ovarian cancers are diagnosed only after they have spread, which reduces the prognosis for recovery. Now, a new assay for the early detection of ovarian cancer has been shown to outperform traditional tests, especially in catching cancer early when it matters most.

Uniogen (Turku, Finland) has developed the GLYVAR Ovarian test, a quantitative, non-competitive immunoassay that measures cancer-specific glycan structures on the CA-125 protein marker. Uniogen’s test improves specificity by measuring the sugar parts of the CA125 protein, subsequently reducing healthcare costs and avoiding unnecessary procedures. Uniogen has now presented the findings of a new study showcasing the performance of its GLYVAR Ovarian I and II assays.

Image: The GLYVAR Ovarian I and II assays can detect ovarian cancer much more effectively than the traditional CA-125 test (Photo courtesy of Uniogen)

In the study, blood samples of 184 patients with epithelial ovarian cancers, 127 benign ovarian tumors, and 115 healthy controls were measured using GLYVAR Ovarian I and II assays and the conventional CA-125 protein assay. The findings, published in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, showed that the GLYVAR Ovarian I and II assays outperformed conventional CA-125 assays, increasing detection from 33% to 83% in women with marginally elevated CA-125 levels and showing a 66% higher detection rate for early-stage high-grade serous carcinomas.

The GLYVAR Ovarian assay, which also distinguishes between cancer cases and benign tumors, as well as conditions like endometriosis, reduced the number of false positives generated by the CA-125 protein test by 82%. This is the first study describing the clinical performance of GLYVAR Ovarian I and II assays in ovarian cancer diagnostics. The results highlight the advantages of the GLYVAR Ovarian test and underscore the potential of glycovariant diagnostics to transform ovarian cancer detection.

While many recent early detection studies focus on ctDNA or multi-cancer early detection tests, the distinct technology applied by the GLYVAR Ovarian test can be easily applied in a laboratory environment and does not require any specialized sample preparation procedures, expensive equipment, or advanced data analysis tools. The GLYVAR test is currently available as a Research Use Only (RUO) product, with the next milestone being its introduction for diagnostic use.

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