1. 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.