New ovarian cancer screening test developed by UQ could detect ‘silent killer’ years earlier than usual

A breakthrough new test being developed by Queensland researchers could potentially help detect ovarian cancer years earlier than usual, giving more women a fighting chance.

A breakthrough new test being developed by Queensland researchers could potentially help detect ovarian cancer years earlier than usual, giving more women a fighting chance against a disease that claims three lives a day.

Unlike the traditional ovarian cancer detection blood test known as CA-125, University of Queensland researchers have developed a new test to read the “handwritten letters” — officially exosomes — which cancer cells send to normal cells to spread the tumour.

Research lead Associate Professor Carlos Salomon Gallo said the data proved the test — known as OCRF-7 — performed well in detecting ovarian cancer early in those that were showing symptoms, but a new study was now underway to determine if the method would work to screen women writ large.

University of Queensland Associate Professor Carlos Salomon Gallo.

“We’ve had extremely encouraging results so far in tests validated with 500 women,” he said.

“The capacity of our method to identify positive cases was greater than 90 per cent, suggesting it could be an ideal first-line test for population screening.”

The federal government, through its Medical Research Future Fund, has put $2.66m toward the research project and a further $2.8m toward another UQ project looking at early detection of lung cancer.

In total $21m of federal grant funding has gone to research projects seeking to improve the detection of cancers with low survival rates, including liver, lung, and ovarian cancer and cancers where the site of origin remains a mystery.

Early screening tests for ovarian cancer don’t currently exist, with the late detection of the disease blamed for its high mortality rate.

In Australia, more than 1500 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and three women die each day from the disease.

At the moment only 46 per cent of women diagnosed will survive past five years.

As part of the next step of the study, Assoc Prof Salomon Gallo’s team has linked up with researchers from the University College London who were involved in the world’s largest ovarian cancer screening trial in the UK, which screened 200,000 women over 36 years.

The results from the multi-year trial would pave the way for evaluating the test in a potential ovarian cancer screening trial.