NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) - Cancer diagnostics developer Almac Diagnostics said today it is undertaking a collaborative study with Oxford University that will seek to create a gene signature to predict the recurrence of ductal carcinoma in situ, a type of breast cancer.
The study will use the company’s Breast Cancer DSA microarray to help generate a gene expression signature that would be used to identify patients who are likely to experience a recurrence of DCIS.
Isolating patients at such a risk could be used to help doctors and patients make important treatment decisions, the company said. Total mastectomy may be completely curative for some DCIS patients, but may be over-treatment in other cases, so a diagnostic that would separate those groups could help some patients who face less likelihood of recurrence decide to opt for more conservative procedures.
Almac, based in Craigavon, Northern Ireland, said it will use paraffin-embedded samples for the study and will employ its bioinformatics team to “interrogate the resulting data to identify a potential signature.” Almac will conduct the research with Adrian Harris of Cancer Research UK and a professor of medical oncology at the University of Oxford.
In addition to its breast cancer DSA, Almac also markets a Colorectal Cancer DSA and a Lung Cancer DSA. Diagnostic tools for ovarian cancer and for prostate cancer will be launched later in 2008, the company said.