PHILADELPHIA — Erle S. Robertson Ph.D., professor of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, has been awarded $1.4 million from the Avon Foundation to develop technology for identifying microbial signatures in breast and ovarian cancers.
“About 20 percent of human cancers are associated with infectious agents. With the increase in technology for identifying these agents we estimate that this number is likely to dramatically increase,” says Robertson. This new direction for my laboratory allows for increased enhancement of the technology which was developed with colleagues Jim Alwine in Cancer Biology and Don Baldwin, along with the support of the Abramson Cancer Center through a generous gift. This support provides an opportunity for us to identify microbial signatures important in diagnostic and intervention strategies for breast and ovarian cancers.”
“The ability to identify pathogenic agents associated with human diseases in one screen would be an exciting and unique approach from the current technologies available,” he adds.
Previous detection methods for the presence of viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens in tissue samples use assays of enzymes and other methods, both time-consuming and outdated. More recently, viral microarray approaches have shown promise for global analysis of samples for detection a specific infectious agent.
Development of an assay with the sensitivity of detecting single copies of any pathogenic agent in tissue, cells, plasma, and blood samples from cancer banks would be a powerful tool.
The Robertson lab has developed an array with specific target sequences capable of detecting all sequenced pathogens, in a manner that will distinguish strain or subtype differences. Initially, they will be looking for consistent signatures within the ovarian tissue samples, which may someday lead to a blood or saliva test for non-invasive early cancer detection.
For research purposes this array will provide a means of identifying agents associated with any disease or condition. Clinically, it will provide rapid diagnosis and quickly indicate therapeutic avenues.
“The rapid detection of pathogens associated with a specific condition would likely be an enormous step in diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for the treatment of breast and ovarian cancers as well as other diseases,” says Robertson.
Editors Note: Dr. Robertson has no financial conflicts to disclose.
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