The effort is a part of the events during the Year of Fighting Oncological Diseases in the Republic of Tatarstan.

Employees of the Institute of Fundamental Medicine and Biology and of the Republican Clinical Oncological Hospital will test female volunteers for their predisposition to breast cancer and ovarian cancer. These two particular types of the dangerous ailment are among the primary causes of female mortality in Russia.

In particular, 2014 saw 61 thousand new cases of breast cancer and 13 thousand cases of ovarian cancer. 10 to 20 percent of those are known to be hereditary – some women carry mutated genes predisposing them to developing the disease at some point in their lives.

A person that comes to mind here is, of course, Angelina Jolie who chose to go through double mastectomy after finding out about her BRCA gene mutations. The operation reduced the risk from 87% to 5%.

Senior Research Associate of KFU Yelena Shagimardanova explains, “Tests for gene mutations linked to breast cancer are the central part of our project. A person who wishes to participate must submit 5 ml of venous blood. After working through the submissions we will randomly select 100 participants who will receive free test results”.

Cancer remains one of the main causes of death worldwide. Despite local medical success stories the percentage increases every year, and one thing is certain – only early diagnostics is the key to eliminating the threat entirely. This is especially true for Russia where the majority of 2014 breast cancer patients were diagnosed with fourth (untreatable) stage. To compare, Japan’s yearly number of new cases is about the same, but only 5% of them are fourth stage. Researchers think that mass testing for genetic predisposition is one of the main factors of changing the trend in Russia.