The researchers succeeded in showing that a subset of low-molecular-weight proteins from the serum of patients formed predictive patterns that could be used experimentally to mark the presence of ovarian cancer.

They detected a diagnostic pattern of five proteins in the blood of women with ovarian cancer that is not found in the blood of other women. Experimentally, in a limited subset of test patients, the test has had a sensitivity of 100 percent and a specificity of 100 percent.