NEW HAVEN, Conn., Feb. 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Mira Dx
announced today that it has licensed technology from Yale
University based on the acceptance of a pivotal breast cancer study
in the January issue of the journal Cell Cycle. While
numerous BRCA1 coding sequence mutations are associated with
breast cancer risk, such mutations in BRCA1 account for less
than 5% of breast cancer risk. The research identified microRNA
disrupting variants in and around BRCA1 that are polymorphic
in breast cancer populations. One key variant (rs8176318) shows
significant cancer association for predicting the risk of
developing triple negative breast cancer, especially for African
American women.
It is estimated that last year in the US more than 207,090 women
were diagnosed with breast cancer, and that 39,840 women died from
the disease, according to the National Cancer Institute website.
Triple negative breast cancer accounts for 15-20% of all breast
cancers, and is the most deadly form of this disease.
“There is a real need for tools that can help women who have a
family history of breast cancer to better understand their risk,”
said Martin Van Verhoef, President & CEO of Mira Dx. “We are
pleased to continue our advancements in the field of miRNAs in
cancer risk and plan to make this information available to women in
2011 in the form of a new triple negative breast cancer risk test.”
Verhoef continued, “We hope that cancer risk markers such as this
marker will provide valuable information for the tens of thousands
of women and families each year who are and may be affected by
triple negative breast cancer.”
Mira Dx was formed in February 2008 by researchers at Yale
University to discover gene-based laboratory tests conducted on
newly discovered genetic regulators called microRNAs (miRNAs). Mira
Dx is applying miRNA discoveries to develop molecular diagnostics,
which will provide individualized information on the likelihood of
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