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Newswise DALLAS October 24, 2014 Genetic screening services for rural and underserved populations will expand from six to 22 counties in North Texas under a $1.5 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to UT Southwestern Medical Center.

The goal is to identify patients with Hereditary Breast-Ovarian Cancer (HBOC) and Lynch syndrome, two of the most commonly inherited cancer predisposition syndromes. For those carrying these mutations, the lifetime risk for breast, ovarian, colorectal, and uterine cancer is as high as 85 percent.

Overall, about 10 percent of cancer diagnoses are hereditary, said Linda Robinson, Assistant Director of Clinical Cancer Genetics at UTSouthwestern. The power of genetic testing is that we can lessen the amount of treatment for these people by finding the cancer early, and for some patients we can prevent it from happening altogether.

Cancer Genetic Services for Rural and Underserved Populations in Texas is part of the Genetics Department at the Harold C. Simmons Cancer Center, in partnership with Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and the Moncrief Cancer Institute and JPS Health Network in Fort Worth. The cost of the genetic evaluation and testing is covered through the CPRIT grant and other external funding sources.

This support from CPRIT is crucial in enabling us to offer genetic counseling to populations who have never received these services, said Dr. James K.V. Willson, Dean of Oncology Programs, Professor and Director of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, Professor of Internal Medicine, and holder of The Lisa K. Simmons Distinguished Chair in Comprehensive Oncology.

The principal investigator on the grant is Dr. Keith Argenbright, Director of the Moncrief Cancer Institute, Associate Professor at the Harold C. Simmons Cancer Center and Department of Clinical Science, UT Southwestern.

We now have the ability to connect with patients through telemedicine, a high tech communications system linking patients in outlying counties with our genetic specialists, said Dr. Argenbright. With this new grant, we are building on the success of a similar program CPRIT funded three years ago, which brought state-of-the art genetic testing closer to home for our patients.

The new grant funds the program for an additional three years. The initial $1.6 million CPRIT grant from 2011 included Tarrant, Dallas, Wise, Hood, Johnson, and Parker counties, a population of 3,511,623. The expansion includes a population increase of 1,156,449 and covers an estimated additional 13,480 square miles, more than double the size of Massachusetts. In Texas, 43 percent of the population is uninsured or underinsured. CPRIT funding allows for genetic services for patients who have never had access to these services before.

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UT Southwestern Researchers Receive CPRIT Funding to Expand Genetic Screening Program to Reach Medically Underserved ...