If you've been reading this blog for a while you may know that in recent years I've had the privelege to be involved with a research project at the University of Massachusetts which uses breastmilk to study breast cancer.
I'm very pleased to report that the first paper to come out of one of these studies has recently been published. The results, which were announced to great press attention earlier this year.
I was just explaining this research to a friend of mine, and I thought I should do the same here, especially because the paper is pretty technical.
Dr. Kathleen Arcaro (at right, visiting one of my breastfeeding groups) studies breast cells for evidence of DNA changes which might be associated with the development of breast cancer. She gets breastmilk samples (that's where I come in), extracts the breast cells which are naturally present in the milk, extracts the DNA from those cells, and looks for "methylation" of specific genes. She's looking for methyl groups which attach to some important genes, such as tumor suppressor genes which, as the name suggests, inhibit the growth of tumors. That's a gene you want functioning, right? Well these methyl groups can "turn off" the functioning of those genes, increasing your risk of developing cancer. Your DNA can get methylated through behaviors - smoking, poor diet, environmental exposure, for example. So Kathleen is looking for
Why would we want to know about this? Because 1) it's possible to reverse methylation, through behavior changes and through emerging drug therapies, and consequently reduce cancer risk, 2) anti-methylating drugs may be able to reverse the course of cancer someday, 3) because this research could yield a method of giving mothers a personalized assessment of their risk of breast cancer, just by analyzing a sample of their breastmilk, and 4) because one day mothers might be able to send a milk sample for analysis in lieu of having a biopsy (and being told, as they often are, to wean first).
The beauty of this research (or one, I should say), is that when you look at breast cells in breastmilk you get cells from all parts of the breast. The alternative, a biopsy, can only look at cells in one part of the breast.
We're recruiting for several studies locally now, so if you're in Western Massachusetts, check out this page to donate!
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