Chemical Safety During Breast Cancer Susceptible Windows
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: We will design an environmental chemical safety testing strategy to discover the chemical pathways that might trigger breast cancer. We believe that chemical testing will be effective at identifying dangerous exposures in human populations. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Research question(s) or central hypotheses: It is unlikely that there is a single chemical pathway to breast cancer. The pathways are likely to depend on type and level of exposures, and when they occur, including during windows of susceptibility (such as the prenatal period, post-puberty adolescence, time at first birth, and menopause). With data from three generations of women, we propose to 1) identify pathways to breast cancer during two windows of susceptibility; 2) identify different pathways in vulnerable populations (such as ethnic minorities); and 3) identify the role of environmental chemical exposures within these pathways. 
 
 
 
 
 
 General methodology: Researchers are using existing biological samples (serum) from Child Health and Development Studies (CHDS) participants to determine chemical exposure. The CHDS is a 50+ year and three generations continuing cohort, involving serum from over 30,000 individuals. A new method (high-resolution metabolomics) can analyze and inventory thousands of chemicals from a single sample for current and future research. This study will use the first generation’s mother and father serum. Thanks to California Breast Cancer Research Program’s (CBCRP) funding of a previous CHDS study, we have valuable breast cancer information on three generations of women to complement the chemical information. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Innovative elements: This will be the first study to examine environmental chemical pathways to breast cancer across three generations from thousands of chemical exposures. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Advocacy involvement and relevance to the human issues associated with breast cancer: Our Participant Advisory Committee (PAC) community-based research partner includes participants from the first two generations of the CHDS. As a full research partner on another CBCRP-funded study, the PAC encouraged the scientists to educate the public about breast cancer risks and prevention. With this study, we hope to develop information that can lead to breast cancer prevention. The PAC has gained considerable expertise in the role of windows of susceptibility, the challenges of breast cancer research, and the complex impact of multiple environmental exposures. The PAC also recognizes that the large representation of African Americans in the CHDS makes it possible to explore why African Americans have more aggressive breast cancer and lower survival rates. We expect this collaboration to be fruitful, as well as to model a new example of community-based participatory research (CBPR) within an existing cohort. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Publications: 
 
 
 
 Blood transcriptomics and metabolomics for personalized medicine