“Experimental chip measures breast estrogen easily - detnews.com” plus 4 more

Experimental chip measures breast estrogen easily - detnews.com
GOP candidate shoots target with Florida Democrat's initials - Honolulu Advertiser
Panthers Getting Healthier Before Washington Game - WSOC-TV
Researchers Map Breast Cancer's Transformation - FOX News
'Lab on a Chip' Might Speed Breast Cancer Monitoring - MedicineNet.com

Experimental chip measures breast estrogen easily - detnews.com

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 09:50 PM PDT

Lauran Neergaard / Associated Press

Washington -- Estrogen fuels breast cancer yet doctors can't measure how much of the hormone is in a woman's breast without cutting into it. A Canadian invention might change that: A lab-on-a-chip that can do the work quickly with just the poke of a small needle.

Several years of study are needed before the experimental device could hit doctors' offices, but the research published Wednesday opens the tantalizing possibility of easy, routine monitoring of various hormones. Doctors could use it to see if breast cancer therapy is working, tell who's at high risk, or for other problems, such as infertility -- maybe even prostate cancer.

"It's thought-provoking to think, 'What could I do with a tool like this?'" said Dr. Kelly Marcom, breast oncology chief at Duke University Medical Center, who wasn't involved with the new invention. "It opens up an avenue of investigation that without tools like this, you couldn't explore."

The University of Toronto researchers used a powerful new technology to measure tiny droplets of estrogen from samples at least 1,000 times smaller than today's testing requires. Called digital microfluidics, it uses electricity to separate and purify droplets of the hormone from a mix of other cells -- all on the surface of a chip no bigger than a credit card.

"Droplets essentially can be made to dance across the surface," said University of Toronto engineer Aaron Wheeler, who co-invented the device and calls the project "the most fun I've had in science."

The research was published in a new journal, Science Translational Medicine.

Here's the problem: Scientists have long known that estrogen plays a role in many breast cancers. While hormone tests traditionally are done with blood, estrogen is particularly concentrated in breast tissue and breast cancer patients have much higher levels than other women. But measuring breast estrogen requires a fairly substantial biopsy, a painful and invasive procedure with its own risks. Then come hours of intense laboratory work to extract and purify the estrogen from the mishmash of other cells. So that breast-testing is hardly ever done.

If doctors had a way to easily monitor breast estrogen levels, they could track which cancer survivors are responding to widely used estrogen-blocking therapies.

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GOP candidate shoots target with Florida Democrat's initials - Honolulu Advertiser

Posted: 09 Oct 2009 11:12 AM PDT

MIAMI A South Florida Republican said it was a mistake to shoot at a target with the initials of the Democratic congresswoman he is trying to unseat.

Candidate Robert Lowry made a brief statement to a local newspaper but refused to speak further today about the incident, which happened Tuesday during a weekly GOP meeting at a gun range.

Organizer Ed Napolitano defended the gathering, as well as the use of targets that appeared to be gunmen with traditional Arab head scarves.

"That's our right," said Napolitano, president of the Southeast Broward Republican Club. "If we want to shoot at targets that look like that, we're going to go ahead and do that."

Lowry declined to comment to The Associated Press. He initially told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that shooting at a target with the letters "DWS" a not-so-veiled reference to Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was a "joke," but then said it "was a mistake."

His campaign manager, Chris Leggatt, said today: "I don't think we need to make any further comment about it. It's an issue that's been addressed."

Wasserman Schultz, who made headlines earlier this year when she announced she had been secretly battling breast cancer, represents a liberal district that includes a stretch of South Florida from Fort Lauderdale to Miami Beach. She is expected to easily win re-election, though Lowry and three other GOP candidates are vying to face her.

The congresswoman declined to comment. A spokesman, Jonathan Beeton, said "We didn't feel that behavior dignified a response."

Both Lowry and Napolitano said they were unsure who scrawled "DWS" on the target the candidate fired at during the event, which attracted about 50 people.

Many of the targets were basic silhouettes, though others were figures wearing traditional Arab head scarves, called kaffiyeh, and holding rocket-propelled grenades. Napolitano said the faces of those figures appeared to be white, though he understood why they would be assumed to be Arabs. He said critics of the event are simply angry that a Republican minority continues to exist in such an overwhelmingly Democratic area.

"I absolutely have no regrets. I don't care what the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or any of them say I know that they're offended by the simple fact that we're here and we won't go away and we won't be quiet," he said. "For the Democrats, who are supposed to be the party of minority rights, they're not being very sensitive to our rights."

Panthers Getting Healthier Before Washington Game - WSOC-TV

Posted: 07 Oct 2009 08:11 PM PDT

Researchers Map Breast Cancer's Transformation - FOX News

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 09:40 AM PDT

Canadian researchers said on Wednesday they had documented the genetic transformation of a breast tumor mutation by mutation, shedding light on how cancer develops and offering potential new routes to fighting it.

They found 32 separate mutations in the tumor, at least five of which had never been linked with cancer before.

Writing in the journal Nature, they said their method might be used before starting treatment of certain cancers and as a way to monitor a patient's progress.

"This is a watershed event in our ability to understand the causes of breast cancer and to develop personalized medicines for our patients. The number of doors that can now be opened to future research is considerable," Dr. Samuel Aparicio, head of the breast cancer research program at the British Columbia Cancer Agency, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

They examined a breast tumor from a patient with estrogen-positive cancer of a type that causes about 15 percent of all breast tumors.

They compared samples from her original biopsy and from a tumor that spread 9 years later. They identified 32 mutations, 19 that were not in the original tumor.

Five of the mutations were previously unknown to researchers as playing a role in cancer.

"This study demonstrates the remarkable capacity of next-generation DNA sequencing technology," said Dr. Marco Marra, of the cancer agency's Genome Sciences Centre.

"The project that decoded the first human genome in 2001 took years and an enormous amount of funding. We were able to sequence the breast cancer genome in weeks and at a fraction of the cost."

Breast cancer will be diagnosed in 1.2 million women globally this year and will kill 400,000.

'Lab on a Chip' Might Speed Breast Cancer Monitoring - MedicineNet.com

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 01:36 PM PDT

'Lab on a Chip' Might Speed Breast Cancer Monitoring

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 7 (HealthDay News) -- A pocket-size device under development could soon help monitor how well breast cancer treatments are working and help assess breast cancer risk by measuring levels of the hormone estrogen.

''We've developed a 'lab on a chip,' which is useful for making quantitative measurements of estrogen in samples of blood or tissue," said Aaron Wheeler, the Canada research chair of bioanalytical chemistry at the University of Toronto and a co-author of a report on the device in the Oct. 7 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

The new device relies on a method called digital microfluidics. The technique is being used to analyze hormones found in tiny samples of blood, serum and breast cancer tissue.

Instead of moving electrons across tiny wires, it electronically manipulates minute droplets of fluid on the surface of a microchip, integrating many different lab functions so fewer are needed, Wheeler explained during a teleconference briefing Oct. 6. Hormones are extracted, purified and analyzed. And it's all done on a device that can fit on the palm of the hand, he said.

The "lab on a chip" technique, already under study in other areas, takes raw, unprocessed tissue and delivers results rapidly, Wheeler said. Estrogen can be measured in minutes.

It also requires much tinier samples than those needed by conventional methods, said Dr. Noha Mousa, also a co-author of the report, who is working on her Ph.D. in medicine at the University of Toronto. "This is 1,000 times smaller than the tissue samples required" by other methods, she said.

For their report, the technique was tested on breast tissue from two postmenopausal breast cancer patients.

Estrogen concentrations are not routinely measured because doing so with conventional methods requires large samples, the researchers noted in their report. But they said that a simpler measuring technique would, for instance, allow doctors to monitor treatment with aromatase inhibitors routinely given to breast cancer patients to block estrogen.

The new method should make that much easier, the researchers said, and it might be practical for other conditions that require hormone level monitoring, such as infertility.

However, Wheeler said that the device and approach are still in the early stages of development. "We anticipate within the next five years a product based on this technique would be available," he said.

An American Cancer Society epidemiologist who was familiar with the report agreed that much more work is needed before the device will be ready for "prime time."

Dr. Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the society, said that the validity of the measurements needs to be assessed but, if the findings hold up, such a device could be very useful.

"It is well known that estrogen is associated with breast cancer risk," Gapstur said. Typically, estrogen levels in the blood are measured, but those levels usually are lower than levels in breast tissue, she said. Breast estrogen levels can be measured by obtaining nipple aspirate fluid, but the fluid is difficult to obtain, especially from older women, she explained.

"Therefore, a device which can measure breast tissue estrogen, which obtains the samples in a painless and quick manner, would be very useful for studies of breast cancer risk and prevention," she said.

SOURCES: Aaron Wheeler, Ph.D., Canada research chairman, bioanalytical chemistry, University of Toronto; Noha Mousa, M.D., Institute of Medicine, University of Toronto; Susan M. Gapstur, Ph.D., M.P.H., vice president, epidemiology, American Cancer Society, Atlanta; Oct. 7, 2009, Science Translational Medicine

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Breast Cancer

Friday, October 9, 2009