"Using Polygenic Risk Scores to Improve Cancer Prevention" (Giordano Botta)

"Using Polygenic Risk Scores to Improve Cancer Prevention" (Giordano Botta)

Join us for an exciting online event where Giordano Botta will discuss the latest advancements in using polygenic risk scores to enhance cancer prevention. Learn about the potential benefits of this cutting-edge approach and how it can revolutionize the field of oncology. Don't miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights from a leading expert in the field.

Traditional cancer screening often falls short. For breast cancer, current strategies rely on clinical risk factors, age, and a limited set of "monogenic mutations" (changes in a single gene that can lead to a genetic disorder), leaving many women at risk undetected. For prostate cancer, PSA (Prostate-Specific Antigen) testing, the standard blood test for screening or monitoring this protein produced by the prostate gland, often fails to stratify risk correctly, leading to both over-diagnosis and missed cases. Polygenic risk scores (PRS), derived from saliva or blood samples, aggregate the effects of hundreds of thousands of genetic variants, providing a far more comprehensive and accurate picture of inherited cancer risk.

With PRS, you can:

• Identify the ~20% of women who have a risk equivalent to monogenic mutation carriers but are overlooked by current guidelines.
• Show that even for women with BRCA1/2, CHEK2, or PALB2 mutations, you can dramatically alter lifetime risk, guiding earlier and more tailored screening—sometimes up to 20 years earlier than standard recommendations.
• Improve prostate cancer detection by identifying men at high genetic risk who are missed by the standard of care, helping to overcome the limitations of PSA testing and optimize screening strategies.
• Ensure equity in precision medicine through multi-ancestry PRS, so individuals from all backgrounds benefit equally.

Giordano Botta, PhD, is uniquely qualified to lead a discussion on polygenic risk scores. is a molecular biologist with a PhD in Public Health. He gained experience doing research alongside leading genomics experts at the University of Oxford and published in Nature before founding Allelica, where he pioneered the development and clinical implementation of multi-ancestry polygenic risk scores to prevent common diseases. Under his leadership, Allelica has published in top-tier journals including Circulation and Nature Communications, filed four patent applications, and supports leading physicians across major healthcare systems. Allelica’s technology is being used to reduce morbidity and mortality from the leading causes of death worldwide through earlier and more precise genomic risk stratification.

Please join this session to learn:

• Why PRS is a breakthrough in predicting cancer risk for both breast and prostate cancer.
• How PRS are validated across large, multi-ancestry, independent datasets.
• How you and your doctor can use PRS to personalize prevention and screening, detecting cancer earlier when it can be most effectively treated.

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