Brisbane researchers discover gene variations that increase ovarian cancer risk

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A worldwide research project led by Brisbane researchers has uncovered six new gene variations that increase a woman’s risk of ovarian cancer.

The QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute and the University of Cambridge findings take the number of known ovarian cancer gene regions from 12 to 18.

They studied more than 70,000 women from 30 countries as part of the project.

“This is the result of an extremely large study that we’ve been carrying out over several years,” QIMR Berghofer Cancer Program Head Professor Georgia Chenevix-Trench said.

She said the discovery would ultimately help in better diagnosis and prevention of ovarian cancer and would also shine a light on the causes of other cancers.

“The more we find these kinds of regions in different cancers and different conditions the more we realise that there are quite a lot of similarities,” Professor Chenevix-Trench said.

“So for example one of the regions we found is also involved in the risk of pancreatic cancer, another region that’s also involved in the risk of breast cancer, and another of the regions we found is involved in the risk of endometriosis, which is the inflammatory condition that can predispose to ovarian cancer.

“So understanding the genetics can also really help us get a handle and an understanding of the biology behind these diseases.

“If you’ve already got a very strong risk of ovarian cancer because of a mutation, the subtle differences that these other genetic regions can impose on top of that can make quite a big difference as to whether you are likely to get ovarian cancer at 30 or at 50.”

Professor Chenevix-Trench said they needed personalised risks for individual women so each person could decide when their risk was highest and how they wanted to deal with it.

“By understanding more about who is at highest risk we should be able to modify our clinical treatment accordingly and that should reduce the risk of ovarian cancer,” she said.

Professor Chenevix-Trench said ovarian cancer was notoriously difficult to diagnose, and the discovery of these gene variants should make it easier to prevent.

“It is a problem diagnosing ovarian cancer and particularly the kind of cancer we’re studying which seems to rise very rapidly,” she said.

“So rather than focussing on early diagnosis, which might be extremely difficult, it’s much better if we can focus on prevention.

“And in order to prevent cancers efficiently, you really need to knew who’s at highest risk and focus your efforts on those women.

“The prevention strategies mostly include removing your ovaries so that’s obviously a very important decision and has to be juggled with your childbearing so that’s why people really want an individual estimate of when their risk of ovarian cancer is highest.”