OnCo
ideasIdea

Go back to families of women who died of ovarian cancer and offer BRCA testing

Many women who died of ovarian cancer were never tested for BRCA. Testing their stored tumour samples and contacting their relatives would find carriers before they get cancer.

Traceback programmes retest archived tumour tissue from deceased untested patients and contact relatives; US pilots demonstrate feasibility and ethical acceptability. Propose scaled traceback for ovarian, young-onset breast, and pancreatic cancer cases from the past 15 years.

Hypothesis
Traceback identifies at least one previously unknown carrier per ten deceased probands tested.
Rationale
BRCA prevalence in ovarian cancer is about 15%, and relatives of deceased probands are otherwise unreachable.
What would test it
Run a regional traceback pilot on 2,000 archived cases.
Maturity
early clinical
Who has to act
clinic
Cost to try
Medium ($1M to $50M)
Years to first evidence
3
Bottlenecks it attacks

Connected

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