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Breast cancer statistics in Australia are alarming. According to the McGrath Foundation 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with this all-too-common disease before the age of 85. Despite these figures, existing breast cancer detection methods have a number of worrying limitations.

鈥淭he gold standard for breast cancer screening is mammography but this is only available to women between the ages of 40 to 74 years old. Mammography can be coupled with ultrasound for these women and ultrasound is also sometimes used for younger women,鈥� says Dharmica Mistry, University of Sydney alumna.

This is a result of breast density.

鈥淢any women, particularly younger females have dense breasts making it harder to visualise a tumour using mammography. Given this, detection accuracy is limited to 70 to 80 per cent."

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"The issue with each of these methods is that they are highly subjective.鈥�

Beyond limited accuracy there are other restrictions that come with these techniques and imaging technologies.

鈥淢ammography is painful and uncomfortable (50 per cent of eligible women self-exclude for this reason). It鈥檚 also unavailable in remote locations and exposes women to radiation.鈥�

Given the pressing need to produce a more accurate breast cancer detection method, Dharmica, at only 22-years old, was overwhelmed when she made a breakthrough association between a person鈥檚 fat profile (lipids) and breast cancer.

鈥淎rmed with my undergraduate degree, I decided to take a risk and work for a small start-up company looking at the association between breast cancer and scalp hair using x-ray.

鈥淚 commonly used my hair as a healthy control in our experiments, but one day, suddenly, my hair was showing the breast cancer feature. Nervous, I spoke to my colleague, Dr Peter French about my hair regime, and that鈥檚 when it dawned on me that every so often I put olive oil in my hair as a moisturiser.

鈥淭hrough a series of experiments, we were able to show that the feature in the hair was actually due to a change in a person鈥檚 fat profile, a special set of fats called lipids. This was a scientific breakthrough and led to the filing of an international patent application.

鈥淏ecause hair is quite variable, we were later able to show that this lipid feature could be detected through a blood test,鈥� says Dharmica.

鈥淎 blood test has improved accuracy, it鈥檚 available to women of all ages, it鈥檚 not subjective (reader dependent), it鈥檚 not limited by breast density, it鈥檚 more accessible to women in rural and remote regions, it鈥檚 more comfortable than mammography and it鈥檚 safer (no radiation exposure).鈥�

While this research has unbelievable potential, the path from discovery to doctor鈥檚 desks is a difficult one.

鈥淭here is always plenty to do when commercialising research. We must validate our optimised platform, demonstrate that it is translatable, work towards regulatory approval and carry out formal clinical trials.

鈥淭he discovery is the easy part. The road ahead is very different to traditional research so you have to be open minded, read up, multi-skill and most importantly, speak to customers and industry to make sure you have a solution that matters,鈥� says Dharmica.

It鈥檚 also incredibly important to believe in yourself and your discovery because there will be setbacks Dharmica advises.

鈥淪hortly after we made our discovery, the company I was working for went into administration and the IP was lost. We knew there was something in our research and we felt it needed a chance.

鈥淪o, we found two angel investors and the four of us (including my co-inventor) co-founded BCAL Diagnostics in 2010, when I was just 24-years-old. I have been working here ever since and have progressed to chief scientist.鈥澨�

hope to have commercialised their revolutionary early detection blood test very soon, where research could then shift focus onto other types of cancer.

鈥淲e have very preliminary data that shows that a blood test has the potential to work for other cancers too and we could be able to distinguish between different types of cancer. This is very exciting and opens up a whole world of opportunity.鈥�