BIOL 3095 October 14, 2011.Seminar Reflection #3: “Early detection of recurrent breast cancer using metabolite

profiling.”By: Angélica M. González Sánchez Student number: 804-11-3354

On the seminar presented by the Ph.D. candidate Mrs. Leiddy Alvarado, she reported us

about one of her researches on breast cancer. Its main objective was to find metabolites which

could function as biomarkers to detect recurrent breast cancer earlier. Actually there are several

methods to keep a regular observation on cancer, but they lack sensitivity and specificity,

meaning that they are not certain enough to give precise positives. Because of these limitations,

scientists as Mrs. Alvarado are working on finding more effective surveillance techniques such

as metabolite profiling. This technique gives information about the cell structure by studying its

metabolites, which are the products of the chemical reactions of the cell. To perform this, blood

samples from patients with recurrence of breast cancer and from those who haven’t showed

recurrence were examined using several techniques from analytical chemistry, such as nuclear

magnetic resonance (NMR) and two-dimensional gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

(GC×GC-MS). These techniques collected very quantitative and specific data on the masses of

very small molecules, such as metabolites. Then, the obtained data was processed by several

statistical analysis methods which lastly resulted on the identification of 11potential metabolite

biomarkers for recurrent breast cancer, which still need to be validated.

This seminar’s topic is significantly relevant to our society because of the implications it

will have on the no-invasive and early detection of breast cancer, a condition which recurrence

has increased severely on the last decades. It is also pertinent because of its possible applications

in the search for metabolite biomarkers for other cancers. Because of this, and for all the new

concepts learned, I think that this seminar was quite didactical and remarkable.