text_1: Test may help predict colon cancer recurrence risk
text_2: Whether to give chemotherapy after surgery for localized colon cancer is controversial. Chemotherapy has significant side effects and the survival benefit is small. As is currently done for breast cancer, to be able to predict whether the tumor is likely to return after surgery would help guide treatment decisions about chemotherapy. This story reports on new results on a gene test for colon cancer tumors to be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting. Unfortunately the new test was only modestly able to predict colon cancer recurrence and failed to predict response to chemotherapy. Future research is clearly needed. This story adequately represents the novelty and availability of the test. It does not engage in disease mongering and is clear on the target of the test – colon cancers that are large but have not spread beyond the colon. It quotes multiples sources and is clear to point out who is invested in the development of the test. The story could have been improved by describing what is currently done to determine need for chemotherapy (i.e. pathology and/or imaging tests), by providing the baseline average risk of recurrence as a comparison to the predicted risk from the  test, and by describing potential harms of the test. Finally, the story doesn’t really give any details on the current study or the overall strength of the evidence to support the use of the test. Although the story points out that the results will be presented at a meeting, it should have made the point that these studies are not rigorously peer-reviewed and evaluated prior to presentation, which makes it more difficult to evaluate the study at this time.