It’s well known that early detection of cancer leads to better patient outcomes and can improve overall survival, which is why researchers are actively working on developing tests to improve early detection. With funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s prestigious Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (F31) program, UW Cellular and Molecular Pathology doctoral candidate Amanda Schussman will be joining in these worthwhile efforts.
Working under the mentorship of Muhammed Murtaza, MBBS, PhD, Associate Professor in the Division of Surgical Oncology and Director of the UW Center for Precision Medicine, Schussman is studying ways in which blood tests can be enhanced to identify various forms of cancer.
“Our current blood tests are promising, but they still face significant clinical challenges. I’m interested in whether we can improve their accuracy by specifically testing for structural variants, which are a class of genomic changes that occur in the DNA of most types of cancer cells. This could help us use a single test to accurately detect many kinds of cancers,” explained Schussman. “These variants occur when the repair of damaged DNA goes awry, causing two distant parts of the genome to join abnormally. The altered structure in this abnormally merged fragment of DNA creates an identifiable breakpoint in the DNA, and we are developing a test to detect such breakpoints.”
With the support of her NIH award, Schussman will be developing the laboratory and computational methods to detect the molecules that contain these breakpoints, called chimeric molecules, and determining the extent to which the molecules can serve as a biomarker for cancer. She will also be developing methods to enrich chimeric molecules so the test she develops is both accurate and cost-effective.
“My long-term goal is to lead translational research that drives the development of new diagnostic tests for cancer and other human diseases, and the F31 fellowship award is a big step forward in helping me achieve this goal,” said Schussman. “I’m incredibly thankful to Dr. Murtaza and my colleagues in the Murtaza Lab for their ongoing mentorship and support, and I’m excited to conduct research that could ultimately help improve patient lives through early cancer detection.”