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Race Against Time To Develop Early Breast Cancer Detection Markets.
Friday, 11 August 2006
Unlike most of our caucasian counterparts who are diagnosed with postmenopausal breast cancer, National Cancer Centre Singapore researchers have realised that more premenopausal women between the age of 25-40 are struck with the disease in Asia. Hence the race against time to develop biomarkers for even earlier cancer detection.
A/ Prof 's Kanaga Sabapathy research to develop molecular biomarkers for early breast cancer detection is one of the many at the centre that would be translated to tools for early detection of cancers.
His study of 3 years involved nearly 300 healthy subjects with 160 Chinese subjects and 100-140 Indian and Malay subjects. He compared these healthy subjects' blood sample with that of biopsies of breast cancer patients. Through his research of the P 53 gene ( a protective gene that is found in everyone), he has found that for those who are healthy, there is a higher expression of the proline polymorphism in the gene. In those who had breast cancer, the arginine polymorphism was expressed more. His data indicates that about the 70-75% of Br ca patients express this variant. By contrast, this variant is only expressed at about 32-35% in healthy people. So, there is a clear increase in expression of this variant in breast cancer patients.
There is possibly the exciting association between arginine expression and the fact that Caucasians have expressed more of this polymorphism and are twice as susceptible to cancer as Asians.
There is a group of ladies in Asia (Chinese, Japanese), who get early-onset breast cancer (bet 25-40), besides the other group which develops Br Ca at post-menopausal stage. The Caucasians predominantly get Br ca at the post-menopausal stage. His team is working to identify if there are genetic differences between Caucasians and Asians, which may explain the early onset in the local population. His team has identified a candidate gene variant at this point in time. His hypothesis is that such a variant will be enriched in the early-onset Br Ca patients. Hence, the next step is for him to evaluate the status of this gene variant in the early-onset Br ca patients in Asia. If they find that this variant is enriched or predominantly expressed in the early-onset Br ca patients, then this can be used as a marker to detect who in the population are expressing this variant, and help identify them early. This will enable to monitor these people closely.
It is important to note that this variant is present in each individual from birth, and hence, can be used to identify people, if their results show that this variant is enriched in the early-onset Br Ca patients.
A/ Prof Sabapathy, who spent 5 years doing his post doctorate in cancer biology at the Institute for Molecular Pathology in Vienna, Austria, hopes to have enough funds to run his laboratory for the next few years. His hope is to apply his molecular research to detect not just breast cancer but other cancers as well.
Coverage opportunities
For more details, photos and media interviews on the above, please click [here].
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