Almac Diagnostics have partnered with breast cancer researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Miller (UM) to win a prestigious Department of Defense Synergistic Idea Award, one of just twelve such grants awarded in the United States.
The $725,000 research grant over two years will allow Lisa Baumbach, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Miller School, and Mark Pegram, M.D., Professor of Medicine and Associate Director for clinical and translational research at the Braman Family Breast Cancer Institute at Sylvester, to expand their earlier work and examine the genetic differences found in African-American breast cancer patients.
Baumbach and Pegram’s study utilizes Almac’s Cancer DSA™. The Almac Cancer DSA™ is the first high-density microarray to focus on the transcriptome of a particular disease and as a result contains significant, additional and relevant information. The tool has been designed to enable profiling from both frozen and FFPE tissue which allows application of this unique microarray technology to current clinical practice and retrospective tissue banks.
Professor Paul Harkin, President of Almac Diagnostics explains that; “the Almac Diagnostics Breast Cancer DSA™ research tool offers the most comprehensive gene expression analysis platform for the study of breast cancer with over 60,000 biologically relevant transcripts available for interrogation.”
The UM teams preliminary findings showed ethnic-specific gene expression patterns in African-American women. Using breast cancer tissue samples, they will now compare genome expression in African-Americans with naturalized African women, examining 50 women in each group. In addition, Baumbach and Pegram will also analyze chromosomal alterations associated with gene expression differences.
Lisa Baumbach, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Miller School said:” Recent discoveries using the Almac Breast Cancer DSA™ indicate there may be distinct genetic differences in breast tissue between African-American, Caucasian and Hispanic patients. The new grant will allow the UM team to take those findings a step further, with an international collaboration on women of African descent.”
Baumbach stated that Almac’s particular expertise in working with FFPE samples has opened up a wealth of potential information; “determining the exact genetic differences in breast tissue samples of certain ethnicities could have worldwide ramifications in terms of reducing the global burden of breast cancer by developing more effective preventions and treatments.”
Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among African-American women, and for this ethnic group, carries a 20 percent greater mortality than that of Caucasian women. Among the scientific community it is widely acknowledged that African-American women, regardless of their age, are more likely to have triple negative breast cancer. In addition, it is likely to occur at an earlier age, and have a higher proliferative fraction. All these factors add up to a worse prognosis.
Baumbach said: “There is a clear need for us to better understand the genetic differences in women of African ancestry so we can translate that into more effective guidelines and therapies.”
Agreeing with his colleague Pegram concluded: “We hope to identify the genes or molecular alterations that are causing these differences among ethnic groups. Once that happens, the goal is to identify a potential therapeutic target to personalize therapeutic approaches.”
