UNIQUE COLUMBIA: Medical project makes breast cancer headway

COLUMBIA, 11/19/09 (Beat Bytes) -- Working with a little-known National Cancer Institute project called the Columbia, Missouri Serum Bank, researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia have discovered that women with increased levels of so-called Müllerian inhibiting substance (MIS) may be at a greater risk for breast cancer.

MIS is a hormone-like biochemical that regulates sexual differentiation in boys; inhibits elongation and branching of mammary (breast) ducts; and slows mammary tumor growth in animals.

 

Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute last month, Fox Chase researcher Joanne Dorgan, Ph.D. studied 309 participants registered at the Columbia, Missouri Serum Bank, finding that increasing MIS concentrations were associated with greater breast cancer risk.

 

As part of the NIH/National Cancer Institute's Biological Markers Project, 6,915 women living in and around Columbia who were free of cancer donated blood to the serum bank between 1977 and 1987.  Participants provided information about

breast cancer risk factors:  age, height, weight, reproductive and menstrual histories, family history, medical conditions, and drug use, including oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy. 

 

Stored at a very cold -70 degrees C, serum from 6,720 (97%) of the original donors remains in the bank.  During a 1989 follow-up, 244 invasive cancers, including 107 breast cancers, were discovered among women who were cancer-free at blood collection.

 

NIH researchers consider the Columbia, Missouri Serum Bank "a unique resource that can be used for biochemical epidemiology studies aimed at identifying serum markers associated with cancer risk." 

 

RELATED:

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00340210