The lab of Division of Surgical Oncology Associate Professor Dr. Muhammed Murtaza is committed to identifying and developing ways to diagnose cancer early, when more patients can be cured. Murtaza, who is also the Director of the UW Center for Precision Medicine, believes that focusing on developing tests for biomarkers that are cancer-specific provides an avenue for improving our ability to detect cancer DNA and could confer advantages over current tests.
“As cancer tissue grows, it sheds some of its DNA, called cell-free DNA (cfDNA), into the blood stream. While blood tests have been developed to detect cancer-related cfDNA, our current testing options often miss cancers and sometimes raise false alarms,” explained Murtaza.
With the support of a new 23-month, $25,000 Badger Challenge Scholar Grant, Murtaza’s team will investigate structural variants, which are alterations in cancer DNA that could improve the performance of tests for early cancer detection but which have thus far been challenging to study. Structural variants occur when large sections of DNA are lost, gained, or shuffled around as the cancer grows. When a structural variant forms, it creates a unique breakpoint, or a “scar,” where the DNA was disrupted.
Amanda Schussman, a member of Murtaza’s lab and a predoctoral fellow in the Cellular and Molecular Pathology graduate program, will lead this project and was integral its development. She will be developing a new blood test that aims to detect and enrich the DNA molecules that contain structural variant breakpoints. The hope is that this test can achieve early cancer detection with greater accuracy than existing blood tests.
“The stage at which cancer is detected has a direct impact on patient survival, so to improve prognosis and patient outcomes it is essential that we develop tests that can detect cancer as early in its disease course as possible,” said Murtaza. “We’re incredibly grateful for the support of the Badger Challenge Scholar Grant for this early, high-risk but potentially high-impact project. Ultimately, our goal is to develop a highly accurate early cancer detection test that will lead to higher survival rates, less intense treatment, and reduced health care costs for patients with cancer around the world.”