Our findings suggest that the free-radical damage leads to increased tumor risk. We've demonstrated with the female breast that the attack on the DNA is a nonrandom progression. This means that some women have very little damage in their DNA, whereas other women have severe damage. Then, we established cancer probability models based on statistical evaluations of the data from normal women. Data processing is performed by the Perkin-Elmer Expert Search software.
Statistical analyses reveal even more differences.
However, our main objective is not to distinguish cancer from noncancer. Pathologists in just about any laboratory can do this with an ordinary microscope-that is, identify cancer cells characterized by changes such as a loss of differentiation and a lack of orientation of cells to one another. Our objective was to identify premalignant structural changes in the DNA of normal women, to understand these changes and their relationship to the causation of cancer and, most importantly, to predict the probability of cancer formation. Perhaps months or years ahead of a positive result by mammography. In this regard, let me emphasize that I am talking about changes occurring in DNA in the absence of any cancer cells.