News
DNA test could improve access to cervical screening
A six-step test for two high-risk types of HPV delivered results in 45 minutes and required just two pieces of equipment
A DNA test for HPV infections could broaden access to cervical cancer screening, scientists have found.
Bioengineers from Rice University, Texas have shown that a low-cost, point-of-care DNA test for HPV could make cervical cancer screening more accessible in low and middle-income countries, where 90 per cent of deaths from cervical cancer occur.
HPV is a common virus spread by skin-to-skin contact. It is estimated that around eight in 10 people get it during their lifetime.
There are more than 200 types of HPV – around 40 types affect the anus and genitals and 14 of these are linked to some cancers.
Cervical cancer is the most common HPV-associated cancer. It kills more than 300,000 women globally every year, disproportionately affecting women in low- and middle-income countries such as South Africa, India, China and Brazil.
‘A mobile diagnostic van’
Researchers at Rice University, led by Professor Rebecca Richards-Kortum, spent more than two years developing a DNA testing platform to simplify the equipment needs and procedures for testing.
In a study, published in Science Translational Medicine, Richards-Kortum’s team and co-authors from the National Cancer Institute, the Mozambique Ministry of Health, Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center showed the platform could produce clinically relevant results on samples collected at both US clinical sites and at clinical field sites in Mozambique.
They demonstrated their six-step test for two high-risk types of HPV delivered results in 45 minutes and required just two pieces of equipment. One is a small centrifugee and the other is a purpose-built, dual-chamber heater called NATflow which allowed the researchers to use disposable cartridges to avoid false positives arising from workspace contamination.
Kathryn Kundrod, study first author and cancer prevention fellow at the National Cancer Institute, said: “We know what we need to do to prevent cervical cancer. It’s really a matter of access at this point, and that’s one reason this study is exciting from a global health perspective.
“It demonstrates a testing process that could potentially be combined with point-of-care diagnostic and treatment technologies to allow women who’ve never had access to be screened and treated in a single visit in settings like a small clinic or a mobile diagnostic van.”
Richards-Kortum, Rice’s Malcolm Gillis University Professor, professor of bioengineering and the founding director of the Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies, said: “The vast majority of disease detected through screening is precancerous, before the point at which people have cancer.
“That’s why screening programmes are so effective. People who are routinely screened very rarely progress to cervical cancer. It’s people who have never been screened in their lives, or who get screened on really infrequent intervals, who are really at risk.
“That’s why it’s so critical to address the disparities that exist and think about new ways to deliver screening, diagnosis and treatment.”
Kundrod said that if both the NATflow platform and test cartridges were produced on a large scale, each dual-chamber heater would cost an estimated US$500 and each test less than US$5.
She added: “The platform is the other thing that makes this exciting, because it can easily be adapted for DNA tests for other diseases.
“Preventing contamination has been a huge problem for DNA-based point-of-care tests. This is one of the first platforms to address that, and so far it’s the only one to solve that in a way where all the pieces can be easily manufactured with injection molding, which is important from a cost perspective.”
However, Kundrod said the team’s HPV test won’t be ready for widespread use until researchers modify it to detect more cancer-causing types of HPV and conduct additional clinical tests, adding that studies have consistently shown that HPV screening is the most effective way to prevent cervical cancer while DNA testing is the most effective way to screen for HPV infections.
An early PET scan after one cycle of chemotherapy may help predict how aggressive breast cancer responds to treatment, a study suggests.
Research led by The Institute of Cancer Research, London and King’s College London suggests that an early scan taken after one cycle of chemotherapy could help predict how well a patient’s cancer will respond to treatment.
The study focused on patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive form of the disease in which cancer cells lack receptors for the hormones oestrogen and progesterone, as well as the HER2 protein.
Patients with TNBC are usually treated with chemotherapy prior to surgery. While many respond well, residual disease at surgery, typically around six months later, is associated with a significantly poorer prognosis. Identifying people sooner who are unlikely to respond remains a major clinical challenge.
The research explored whether using PET imaging shortly after treatment begins, rather than relying only on MRI scans later in the treatment process, could provide earlier insight into how a patient’s cancer is responding. Twenty-two patients were recruited, with fourteen undergoing FDG-PET scans before treatment and after the first cycle of chemotherapy.
The findings, published in Clinical Cancer Research, showed that changes seen on PET scans after just one cycle of chemotherapy were strongly associated with subsequent response, including whether there was no detectable cancer, known as a complete response, by the end of treatment. Importantly, early PET response showed stronger associations with treatment outcomes than standard mid-treatment MRI scans in this study.
Being able to identify patients who are not responding well at an early stage could allow clinicians to adjust treatment sooner or consider alternative approaches. These findings may also support future strategies to better tailor treatment intensity to individual patients.
The study also compared two types of PET tracers, FDG and FLT, to determine which was most suitable. While both met the study’s technical criteria, FDG-PET was selected for further evaluation due to its better image quality, greater consistency and wider use in clinical practice.
The research also explored how imaging changes after just one cycle of chemotherapy relate to the body’s immune response to treatment. Biopsies taken before and after the first cycle of chemotherapy showed that an increase in immune cells within the tumour was strongly associated with both early PET changes and improved treatment outcomes.
The researchers emphasise that these findings now need to be validated in larger studies. Future work will aim to confirm these results in broader patient groups and explore more accessible imaging approaches, such as ultrasound, alongside PET and MRI.
Sheeba Irshad, professor of cancer immunology at King’s College London and lead of the Breast Cancer Now KCL Research Unit, said:
“In patients who had PET scans both before treatment and after the first cycle, we found that this early scan could predict whether they were likely to achieve a complete response by the end of treatment. These findings highlight the potential of early imaging to guide treatment decisions, and now need to be validated in larger, modern clinical trials.”
Andrew Tutt, professor of breast oncology at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said:
“Research that helps us determine early who is already benefitting from standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy and who might benefit from clinical trials to find better treatments is vital. This study shows that FDG-PET may have great value in this regard. We hope to be able to design studies that further investigate and validate these findings.”
The study was supported by funding from King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Breast Cancer Now, Cancer Research UK, and Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity.
We are excited unveil the three finalists competing for one of the Femtech World Awards’ most coveted honours: the Startup of the Year Award, sponsored by Future Fertility.
This award celebrates an early-stage company making a bold impact in women’s health through innovation, vision and execution.
The winner will be announced at our virtual ceremony on 19 June, with the decision made by a representative from category sponsor Future Fertility.
Congratulations to the shortlist and thank you to everyone who entered or nominated.
Startup of the Year Shortlist
Hello Inside is the first women’s health AI company to turn daily metabolic signals into outcomes women feel and healthcare systems reimburse.
Women’s health has long been under-researched, and current AI benchmarks fail on women’s health questions roughly sixty percent of the time.
Hello Inside built the architecture to close that gap.
Across four years and 12,000+ validated metabolic profiles, three in four women improve at least one symptom within ninety days.
They lose four kilograms in three months, moving from overweight into the healthy range. In a clinical study with Alisa Vitti’s Flo Living, 91.9 per cent reduced PMS burden within sixty days.
U-Ploid is an early-stage biotechnology company tackling one of the most fundamental challenges in fertility care: the sharp, age-related decline in egg quality that limits outcomes across IVF and egg freezing.
While much of the field focuses on improving assessment and selection, U-Ploid is developing a first-in-class therapeutic approach designed to improve egg quality itself by addressing the biological causes of age-related chromosomal errors.
Supported by strong preclinical evidence and now advancing into human studies, U-Ploid combines scientific rigour, regulatory discipline and long-term vision to help redefine what is possible in fertility care.
Gestational diabetes is a strong risk factor for future type 2 diabetes, even in women with normal pre-pregnancy weight, according to a study at the University of Gothenburg.
The researchers call for earlier testing and better follow-up.
“Our results show that gestational diabetes functions as a kind of stress test for the body’s ability to manage blood sugar, and identifies women with a greatly increased risk of future type 2 diabetes”, said Jon Edqvist, PhD and affiliated to research at the University of Gothenburg, and operating room nurse at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
Gestational diabetes is a special type of diabetes that can affect pregnant women.
The condition is defined as elevated blood sugar levels, without previously known diabetes. Treatment involves self-monitoring of blood sugar, advice on lifestyle habits and, if necessary, medication.
Identifying gestational diabetes is important because the disease increases the risk of complications such as preeclampsia, the need for a cesarean section and high birth weight for the baby.
Those who have had gestational diabetes are also at higher risk of later developing type 2 diabetes.
In the current study, published in eClinicalMedicine, researchers now show that gestational diabetes is a strong indicator of future risk of developing type 2 diabetes, even in women with normal weight before pregnancy.
Elevated risk even with normal weight
The study is based on data from the Medical Birth Registry on just over 1.15 million first-time mothers in Sweden, who gave birth between 1987 and 2019. 16,870 women with confirmed gestational diabetes were compared with age-matched women without the diagnosis. The median follow-up period was nine years.
The results show that women with a BMI of 35 and above, i.e. severe obesity, had an almost tenfold increased risk of developing gestational diabetes compared to women with normal weight.
The risk of subsequent type 2 diabetes also increased with higher BMI, but it was significantly increased even with normal weight, which the researchers describe as particularly worrying.
More follow-up and more studies
The researchers behind the study welcome the recently updated recommendations on gestational diabetes in Sweden, where a higher proportion of pregnant women at increased risk are expected to be offered testing earlier in pregnancy, and if necessary, interventions.
“Diagnostics and care of gestational diabetes have looked very different in different parts of the country,” said Annika Rosengren, professor at the University of Gothenburg.
“There is a need for both improved follow-up after gestational diabetes, and more studies that investigate how such follow-up affects future health and prognosis”
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