Presenting at the San Antonio Breast Cancer symposium, Myriad Genetics (MYGN) announced results from a study validating the polygenic component of a forthcoming riskScore test for Hispanic women who test negative for a hereditary cancer mutation with the myRisk Hereditary Cancer test. In an exclusive interview with The Fly, Myriad’s Chief Medical Officer Johnathan Lancaster discussed the results and said the company expects to launch the product in 2019.
POLYGENIC SCORE IN WOMEN OF HISPANIC ANCESTRY: Myriad Genetics announced results from an important study to validate the polygenic component of a forthcoming riskScore test for Hispanic women who test negative for a hereditary cancer mutation with the myRisk Hereditary Cancer test. The study evaluated 87 single nucleotide polymorphisms as breast cancer risk factors through the validation of a polygenic score in 8,487 women of Hispanic ancestry. The results show that the 87-SNP polygenic score was highly predictive of breast cancer risk in unaffected Hispanic women with a significant family cancer history who tested negative for 2 germline mutations in known breast cancer risk genes. Estimates of relative risk due to SNPs ranged from 0.2 to 3.6. The clinical implementation of riskScore for women of Hispanic ancestry may significantly improve the management of high-risk Hispanic women who test negative for mutations in with the myRisk Hereditary Cancer test.
MYRIAD SEES 2019 LAUNCH: “While academic centers had done these large genome wide association studies, most of the data was being collected from Caucasians. And we felt this was not fair, wasn’t appropriate, wasn’t right just to be able to give a comprehensive risk assessment based upon them being Caucasian. So, we set about collecting the world’s largest data set on Hispanic patients and also on African-Americans. That work is ongoing and those data sets are continuing to evolve,” Myriad’s chief medical officer Johnathan Lancaster told The Fly. “We hope that test will be launched to patients in 2019,” the executive added. “Like we did for the Hispanic population where we collected a massive number of samples that would enable us to provide an accurate answer, we are continuing to collect data for the African-American population. We hope that soon after we launch for the Hispanics we can do the same for the African-American community.” The executive also highlighted that “there is no additional charge to patients for this. This was added on as an incremental benefit for patients at no cost. myRisk is our flagship product and this was added on to myRisk at no cost.”
PRICE ACTION: In Friday trading, shares of Myriad fell 1.9% to $31.51.
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