Research project Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women. Early detection is critical for optimal patient outcomes by preventing or reducing tumor progression. Our goal is to identify and validate useful biomarkers from an easily assessable source (e.g., blood) for risk stratification, predication, and improving breast cancer screening.
Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease that needs more precise diagnostic biomarkers. Early detection is critical for optimal patient outcomes by preventing or reducing tumor progression. Our goal is to identify blood-based biomarkers to improve the current image-based screening program. By utilizing blood samples collected from both breast cancer patients and healthy controls within the Northern Sweden Health and Disease Study (NSHDS) and modern analytical methods, we can identify useful biomarkers.
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women. Over the past three decades, breast cancer mortality has been substantially reduced due to advances in breast cancer treatment and widely implementation of the screening programs. Mammographic screening attendance is associated with a significant mortality reduction of 20-30%. Screening saves lives but not without harm. The harms of screening include false-positive results, anxiety, radiation exposure and overdiagnosis. Given the growing concerns about the potential harms of screening, an increased attention has been paid to developing personalized risk-based approaches to target women at high risk and also to identify women who will receive the most benefit of screening. There is an urgent need to identify and validate useful biomarkers from an easily assessable source (e.g., blood) for risk prediction, stratification, and improving cancer screening.
In recent years, omics approaches have emerged as a promising and extremely useful tool to reveal innovative molecular pathways as well as to identify useful biomarkers for diagnosis and prediction of treatment. Metabolomics is an emerging technology to quantify the metabolites, which are the end products of gene regulatory processes and protein activities. In breast cancer, the main metabolic changes are the acceleration of gluconeogenesis, glycolysis and fat mobilization and the decrease in protein synthesis. Several studies have shown that metabolomics holds the capability to effectively differentiate between breast cancer patients and healthy controls using a variety of samples, including tissue, urine, saliva, and blood. In this project, we aim to investigate the role of metabolomics in the early detection of breast cancer by using the blood samples collected from breast cancer patients and healthy controls within the Northern Sweden Health and Disease Study (NSHDS). Additionally, we will combine the data from national registries (such as cancer registries, quality registries and drug prescription registries) to obtain comprehensive information on phenotypes. Specifically, our objectives are
1) identify pre-diagnostic biomarkers to improve early detection
2) investigate changes in biomarkers to find fast-growing cancers
analyse biomarker profiles to discriminate between over-detected and early-detected cancers
3) analyse biomarker profiles to discriminate between over-detected and early-detected cancers
For those of you who have previously participated in NSHDS and who have provided samples and/or data for research, more information about how personal data is processed in the research project is available here: Information for study participants.
