want to learn exactly what your risk of developing cancer is if you carry the
breast cancer gene or another cancer-causing gene we will teach you
all about it I'm here with dr. Kevin Hughes of Harvard's breast cancer Center
and the world's leading advocate for genetic testing for cancer-causing genes
specifically the breast cancer gene and there's much much more beyond that thank
you for visiting with me today John thanks for having me I want to talk
about a breakthrough website where we can now help you as a patient or as a
physician in your office if you carry a cancer-causing gene let's say you carry
the breast cancer gene the BRCA mutation or any other cancer-causing genetic
problem or one that we're not sure what happens we can run that information
through a calculator called the Ask2Me.org calculator. it's available to everyone
AASK to the number to em e dot org and you can find out specifically for you
based on your age and also some medical history what your risk is for the
different kinds of cancers that are associated with the different gene
mutations such as the breast cancer gene the BRCA the check to and the list goes
on. Tell us about the www.ask2me.org calculator. Sure so basically genetic
testing has now become very routine it's relatively inexpensive we're testing for
a large number of genes were used to test for just one or two it's very hard
for physicians or patients to know each of these gene
what we've done is we've reviewed the literature and our team has put together
the best in literature for each of the gene cancer combinations we tried to put
that into a calculator that would help people know what their risk is and so if
you have a mutation in BRCA 1 or mutation CDH1 or the PALB2 which all
sounds like Greek if you go on to the other website and say this is a mutation
I have it's a cancer-causing mutation this is my age this is my gender it will
then tell you your risk of cancer going forward and it tells you for each of the
cancers you're at risk for how much that risk is and then some of the management
guidelines available for that it puts all this information together that even
I as a breast cancer surgeon and a big advocate for genetic testing is too much
for me to withhold in my brain and it'll I had a patient that came to see me with
a gene that causes breast cancer in other cancers and wasn't the breast
cancer gene and she was convinced she wanted a mastectomy and after running
and through that calculator and I wasn't sure what I was gonna come up with it
was amazing to be reassured that her risk of developing breast cancer was
actually pretty low versus crazy high and she and I were comfortable going forward
didn't need a surgery didn't need to be to go through that process and we can
follow her and my goodness when you know for you what your risk is it's
reassuring I think that's very true and I think the idea is that we want to give
the patient an individual risk not a general risk and a woman who's 25
there's a brca1 mutation is at a very high risk of cancer in her life because
she can live unless she's got 70 years to live exactly but if you have a 70
year old woman with that same mutation her risk is not that high that's a
difference a difference in age and then there are different mutations brca1 has
a high risk to risk ATM another gene for risk isn't
so high so we don't want to think that all mutations are the same that they all
cause the same cancer so they all close the same level of risk we need to
individualize it for that patient with that mutation at that age. Ask2me.org/ its associated with Harvard and MIT's labs correct you got to put all
that information together and with dana-farber as well in Boston and it's
available to everyone and that's what we're trying to do with the Breast
Cancer School for Patient's www.breastcancercourse.org translate this information so everyone you're making it
available to everyone you've been preaching to physicians in the community
for two decades and now we're getting to the point where people can find this
information people used to come off from all over the country to find you in
Boston probably for genetic testing now they can get it everywhere correct but
it's still a lot of work and you have to research this information especially if
you think that you're at risk for a breast cancer causing gene and then
undergo genetic testing what we're really talking about is if you're
identified as having a cancer-causing gene say one of the 30 main ones or a
variant and if you've heard the term "Variant of Uncertain Significance" or VUS
as the term we use in medicine we can take that little small change on that
gene that we don't think causes cancer and then even with your website we can
research the information we have with data everywhere to kind of get a sense
if that small little variant is it risk to you that's exactly right and and we
think of genetics as being a precise science it is not there are many
mutations that are in genes that we see that we don't know what they mean or
that are irrelevant like a blue line versus a brown eye person they have
different genes but they're both perfectly normal with a V us we don't
know if it's cancer-causing or not but that information becomes available over
time as we learn about that gene what we tried to do is
make a space within www.ask2me.org where you can put in your variant we can tell you
what people think it means and also track that in the future and let you
know if that thinking changes as people are getting more information so many
breast cancer specialists even people that test for genetic testing this is
new to them this has been available for about a year but you're out preaching
for people to use this tool just like the patient I was just saying that it
really helped me most importantly helped her make good choices but it's available
to you so if you want to learn more about breast cancer gene testing go to
the breast cancer school for patients and you can search BRCA testing we have
a whole video from the Breast Cancer School for Patients more oriented
towards if you're diagnosed with breast cancer but it has all the information
you need to know to get started and we have the link for www.ask2me.org on that
webpage. Thank you for visiting with us and watching us and Dr. Hughes, thanks for
sharing your time with us you're doing a great job and helping so many people
that you don't know and helping so many people in the future because of all of
your work John thank you and thank you for your hard work making sure this is
out there and people know about it not just this with all of breast cancer. We're
gonna keep pushing it, both of us. That sounds good thank you. To learn
more about breast cancer visit the Breast Cancer School for Patients where
we actually teach you everything you need to know. We're here to help you get
the best possible breast cancer care in your community register on our website
to get our list of questions to prepare you for your next doctor visit