Jan. 9, 2013 -- A new test for ovarian and endometrial cancers
looks at cervical fluid obtained during a routine Pap test to
detect genetic mutations linked with the cancers. Although the
research is in early stages, the test did well in detecting
these cancers, says researcher Yuxuan Wang, a graduate student
at the Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics and Therapeutics at the
Johns Hopkins University's Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore. If
ongoing research bears out, the new test could someday become a
routine screening test, much like the Pap test is for cervical
cancer, she says. "This would not add anything to the current
[Pap] procedure," Wang says. "All we do is take part of the
sample for DNA testing.'' The cervical fluid collected during a
Pap smear contains normal DNA and, if a person has cancer, DNA
from those cancer cells. The researchers used genomic sequencing
to pick out the cancerous DNA from the normal DNA. The study is
published in Science Translational Medicine. Problems in
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