$763,454
Monitoring Breast Cancer Metastasis And Treatment Efficacy
University of Washington
Co Investigators: Daniel E. Sabath, Qinghua Feng
Daniel T. Chiu is currently Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington. He obtained a B.A. in Neurobiology and a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D in Chemistry from Stanford University. After completing postdoctoral research at Harvard University, he started at the University of Washington in 2000. He is currently a member of the Center for Nanotechnology and the Neurobiology and Behavior Program at the University of Washington.
In Washington State, breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among women. An effective yet low-cost blood test capable of detecting signs of breast-cancer recurrence early will improve survival. Equally important, such a blood test may be used to evaluate periodically the effectiveness of a treatment regimen, granting patients precious opportunities to seek alternate treatment before more time or money is spent: in addition to subjecting patients to unnecessary devastating side effects. Ineffective chemotherapy, for example, can cost up to thousands per month, which is a significant burden on the healthcare system.
This project will develop a biochip for performing such a blood test and conduct a study to evaluate the performance of the biochip. Such a blood test will become an important assessment tool to pharmaceuticals for evaluating patients' response to a cancer drug during treatment, and it will complement other cancer monitoring methods, such as radiological imaging techniques (e.g. CT or MRI scans). This project, when successfully validated with clinical samples, will give rise to powerful tools to facilitate cancer prognosis and diagnosis as well as the decision when to start or stop treatment.
Grant Update
“In Washington State, breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among women. An effective yet low-cost blood test capable of detecting signs of breast-cancer recurrence early will improve survival. Over the course of our project, we have developed and tested a biochip for performing such a blood test. This biochip measures the amount of circulating tumor cells in peripheral blood, an emerging and powerful cell biomarker for cancer prognosis; our assay also quantifies circulating DNA present in blood, another emerging biomarker of cancer recurrence. In combination, we believe these two complementary sets of biomarkers will become an important assessment tool for evaluating patients’ prognosis and response to a cancer drug during treatment. ”
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