The Daily Bulletin Archive

Mary McCourt, associate professor of chemistry at Niagara University, will present her seminar "Urine-Based Biomarkers for Breast Cancer Detection: Towards the Development of a Pre-mammogram Screen" during Bengal Pause (12:15–1:30 p.m.) on Thursday, March 29, in Science Building 220. This is part of the Spring 2012 Chemistry/Physics Seminar Series, sponsored by the Auxiliary Services Grant Allocation Committee, the Vice President for Student Affairs Office, and the Faculty-Student Association.

[Abstract]

The leading cause of death for women in the 55-to-65 age group is breast cancer. A successful outcome very much depends on early diagnosis and effective treatment choices. Research shows that cancer cells have a different metabolism than normal cells. Recent work has attempted to use these metabolic differences as a screen to develop biomarkers for various diseases using a number of tissues and biofluids. Several research groups have shown that the metabolic products of choline synthesis are associated with breast cancer. The present study tests the hypothesis that the presence of breast cancer and precancerous breast lesions can be identified from metabolite concentrations in the urine. The discipline of metabolomics uses instrumentation such as the NMR spectrometer to detect the presence and concentration differences of metabolites. Statistical analyses then determine any correlation with disease status. This experimental and statistical approach allows for a tight focus on the disease state and the controlled assessment of other co-factors. Initial focus on analysis of the aqueous phase of four representative cell line extracts using NMR suggests that the normal, mortal HMEC, the benign, immortalized MCF12A, and the invasive carcinomas MCF7 and MDA-MB-231 are differentiable when looking at three regions of the spectrum below the water-suppressed region. These regions reflect choline metabolites as well as amino acid metabolites including leucine. Statistically speaking, the four representative cell lines can be seen as falling into discrete regions using the PCA method. Pairwise comparison of the data from the HMEC cells to the individual cell lines suggested a differentiation of normal, mortal HMEC from cell lines representing both immortalized and tumorigenic states. Simultaneous comparison of the data from all four HBEC reveals maintenance of the separation between normal cells and invasive carcinoma cells. The fundamental longer-term goal of this project is to identify markers in urine that differentiate stages of breast cancer in a unique way. The biomarker panel developed can then be tested for its usefulness as a predictive screen.