Clinical evaluative studies in hereditary breast and ovarian cancer
Description: Dr Steven Narod has worked for the past 25 years on adapting emerging knowledge of the genes that cause breast and ovarian cancer to create novel prevention and treatment programs. Over the next seven years he will continue working towards defining better means of estimating risk, for evaluating prevention through surgery and chemoprevention, for improving early detection of breast and ovarian cancers and personalising treatment of breast cancer in women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations. He will study the value of MRI screening on mortality from breast cancer and compare the benefit with preventive mastectomy. He will evaluate if a novel biomarker, serum osteoprotegerin (OPG) is a predictor of breast cancer risk in women with a BRCA1 mutation. He will evaluate a test for identifying minute amounts of circulating DNA in the blood of women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation as means of early detection of ovarian cancer. Furthermore, women with BRCA1 mutations have a relatively poor prognosis when diagnosed with breast cancer and novel approaches to treatment are needed. He will evaluate the impact of various treatments on the ten-year survival from breast cancer on 600 women with hereditary breast cancer, including oophorectomy and cisplatinum in combination. Women with BRCA1 mutations are also at high risk of ovarian cancer. He will evaluate the use of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) as a means of early detection of ovarian cancer in 2000 BRCA1 carriers under surveillance. It is hoped to identify cancers when they are confined to the fallopian tube and curable. The survival of women with ovarian cancer depends on the persistence of cancer cells after surgery is completed. He will study if the marker can be used to identify minute amounts of tumour DNA in the blood and the abdominal cavity as a means of refining stage and predicting prognosis in 200 women with ovarian cancer.
Amount: CA$1,982,000
Funding type: research
Funder scheme: Foundation Grant
Start date: 2017-07-01
End date: 2024-06-30
Investigator: Steven Narod
Institution: Women's College Research Institute (Toronto, Ontario)
Funded outputs count: 6
Funder award ID: 154275_1
OpenAlex ID: G6186598073