Extending the Screening Power of the Pap Smear?

Widespread deployment of Papanicolaou (Pap) smears, arguably the most successful cancer-screening program ever implemented, has resulted in a dramatic drop in cervical cancer incidence and mortality. Samples obtained during cervical cancer screening are often also assessed for human papillomavirus DNA. To determine whether genetic material included in such samples might enable effective screening for endometrial and ovarian malignancies, investigators used whole-exome sequencing to search Pap smear specimens for mutations known to be associated with gynecologic cancers. With massively parallel DNA-sequencing technology, they identified at least one of these mutations in Pap specimens from 100% of 24 women with endometrial cancer and 41% of …