Embryos to get cancer screening
November 2
A London clinic has been given the go-ahead to screen embryos for an inherited form of bowel cancer, it was announced yesterday. The green light for embryo screening came as fresh evidence emerged of the genetic links to bowel cancer. The new screening programme is to be conducted at the assisted conception unit at University College Hospital, London. Doctors will screen embryos for familial adenomatous polyposis coli, a condition which affects children in their early teens. A spokesman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said: “FAP is a serious condition – prenatal diagnosis and selective termination of affected cases has been offered in the past. “Families with the genetic condition have a 50 per cent chance of passing it on to their children, but using pre-implantation genetic diagnosis can help these families have a healthy child.” Meanwhile scientists at Oxford University reported finding a combination of genetic mutations that can raise bowel cancer risk. The findings, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, come from a study of 124 patients with lumps called polyps in the gut. Researcher Sir Walter Bodmer, of Cancer Research UK, said: “Patients who had the genetic variants we studied were twice as likely to have multiple polyps in their gut than those who did not. “Further work will identify additional similar key variant genes that raise a person’s risk of bowel cancer. “I believe we could eventually exploit this knowledge to develop a blood test to identify those at high risk of the disease.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 101 issue 45 (15992-15997)