Detecting breast cancer in your hair

---

Breast cancer is the biggest cancer killer of Australian women. About 2,600 die per year. It also kills around 20 men a year.

Now a technological breakthrough could unmask the disease before it takes hold.

Renae Lopez and Managing Director David Young work for Fermiscan, an Australian company which has created a test for breast cancer from a few strands of hair.

This is how it works: strands of a woman's hair, which haven't been coloured, dyed or chemically treated, are collected and sent to the US.

There, an intense x-ray machine called a synchrotron detects if the hair contains evidence of breast cancer. The result is a world first.

"We're able to detect whether that woman does or does not have breast cancer," David Young of Fermiscan told Today Tonight.

The test is described as 75 per cent accurate, but Fermiscan says that figure will only improve as medical staff become more familiar in collecting untreated hair samples correctly and sending them off for testing.

"Our challenge, more than anything, is being to be able to give women time to plan to attend for the test, so that it's not the week after they've been to the hairdressers, but the week they're going back to the hairdressers," David Young said.

Julianne Barter and her daughter Crystal seem a picture of health, but they share a deadly connection: both are carriers of the high risk breast cancer gene BRC1.

"My grandmother, she had breast cancer when she was 65," Julianne said.

"And then my mother got it when she was 45 and I never thought I would ever get it. And at 36 I found out that I had a small lump."

To cheat death, Julie Anne had a double mastectomy and full hysterectomy. Her daughter, Crystal, is a young mother of two in her 20s. She's now being advised to do the same.

"It feels that my life's already been mapped out for me, now that I've found I've got the gene," Crystal said.

"I've had my children, I want to have another one. I'd like to have a little girl, but then it scares me that I'm going to pass it on to her."

Dr Mary Rickard is one of Australia's most respected chief radiologists. While mammograms are needed to pinpoint where the breast cancer is, the Fermiscan test can do something mammograms can't: detect breast cancer in women outside the 50-69 year age groups.

"The concept is wonderful," Dr Rickard said.

"If you could do a test that's so simple and non-invasive and actually detect breast cancer early for, regardless of the woman's age group, this would be a big plus for us."

Expected to be a first line test before mammograms, biopsies and MRI tests, the Fermiscan hair test will be commercialised and made available to Australians as early as the end of this year for about $250.

It could be cheaper if it becomes eligible for subsidies from government or private health insurance companies.

One-in-eight Australian women will develop breast cancer. The big problem for health professionals is those women for whom English is a second language.

They are 20 per cent less likely to get a check up.

Harj Bariana is head of imagery at the NSW Breast Cancer Institute.

"They don't want to reveal their body and it's the fear factor and it's the not knowing, and they're just scared," Harj said.

Hamida Aly is a wife, mother, grandmother and Muslim. In 2001, Hamida was diagnosed with breast cancer.

"When I found the lump, I didn't tell my family," Hamida said. "I went to see the doctor first."

"I didn't want to worry them."

Thankfully, Hamida is in the clear.

It's been a good year for Fermiscan - the discovery has been published in several international journals and the company took out the Australian Innovator of the Year Prize at New York's Austrade Innovation conference.

"Our theory is, and our patent actually give us the right, to develop prostate, colon and a number of other tests," David Young said.

That could mean in coming years, a hair test for skin, prostate, and colon cancers.

"Have that mammogram, have the ultrasound, have the hair scan," Julianne said. "Please do it."

Reporter's summary

• Fermiscan is an Australian company - it invented the hair test for breast cancer.
• Trials have been completed but more research is underway.
• Strands of untreated hair are tested for breast cancer - they don't need much.
• The test is said to be 75 per cent accurate, but that is expected to rise with familiarity.
• The test should be commercially available in Australia at the earliest by December 2008 - more likely 2009.
• It will cost an estimated $250 for the test. This does not include government/health insurance subsidies, which would bring the cost down.
• The test is designed as a first stop test.
• If cancer is detected, a mammogram is still needed to determine where the cancer is.
• The breast cancer hair test is non-invasive, meaning more women (and men) may get tested.
• One-in-eight women develop breast cancer.
• Breast cancer is the biggest cancer killer of Australian women. About 2,600 die per year. It also kills around 20 men per year.

Further information

Fermiscan Website: www.fermiscan.com.au

For more information about breast cancer screening: cancerscreening@health.gov.au

To make an appointment to have a screening mammogram at your nearest BreastScreen Australia service, please phone 13 20 50 (for the cost of a local phone call).