It's known that breast cancer is one of the most common and often aggressive diseases out there, taking the lives of millions of women all over the world, particularly because sometimes the illness isn't found soon enough to be fought well - but Color Genomics' breast cancer test is aiming for all that to change.
Only a few weeks ago, Food World News reported on Angelina Jolie's latest surgery, a hysterectomy, after her double mastectomy a while back; she went through both procedures preventively, as she has a "faulty" gene that increases her chances of different types of cancers - which she discovered with a much more expensive version of Color Genomics' breast cancer test.
Of course, not all women who have mutations on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes have the same economic resources as Jolie or Kelly Osbourne, which is why it's so important to create tests that determine the possibility of inherited conditions, which is what Color Genomics' breast cancer test intends to do.
Tech Cruch reports that Elad Gil and Othman Laraki, the two people behind Mixer Labs (who ultimately sold their project to Twitter), are developing, with their new company, Color Genomics' breast cancer test to provide affordable genetic screenings - for now, particularly for those women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, which happen only in 1 to 2 percent of the population.
Tech Times reports that Color Genomics' breast cancer testing kit only costs $249, much less than the thousands of dollars a major genetic testing in a lab will go for these days - and the kit only operates with saliva samples, as it was deemed easier to collect than blood.
Fortune reports that Color Genomics operates as follows: people who have purchased the kit online send out the saliva sample to Color, and their labs analyze a total of 19 genes, including the breast and ovarian cancer-related ones - and after getting their results, test-takers can easily talk to the genetic counselors working at the company.
Color Genomics' breast cancer test is a great attempt at democratizing medical technology that's currently only available to few.
