CanRisk: Personalising cancer risk prediction for prevention and early detection

Much more reliable and powerful risk prediction for breast and ovarian cancer can be achieved by combining data on all genetic, lifestyle and hormonal risk factors for the diseases. We have recently enabled multifactorial breast and ovarian cancer risk-assessment through the CanRisk tool (www.canrisk.org) which allows healthcare professionals to obtain personalised cancer risks easily. The presentation will review the CanRisk development process, the challenges in combining the effects of rare pathogenic variants in known susceptibility genes, polygenic risk scores, questionnaire-based risk factors, mammographic density and family history into multifactorial cancer risk prediction algorithms; and will review the efforts to assess the clinical validity of the predicted risks in large independent studies. The presentation will finally discuss ongoing and planned efforts for the implementation of multifactorial cancer risk assessment in routine clinical practice for enabling cancer risk stratification and the better targeting of early detection and prevention approaches to those most likely to benefit.