Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects

Despite the global research effort aimed at cancer prevention and treatment, cancer is still a major killer of Canadians. Thecost of diagnosis and treatment to our health care system is staggering. We need better, early and accurate diagnostic testsof cancer to provide the best early treatments to improve treatment outcomes and reduce loss of life.Cancer can be detected early in patients by finding tumor molecules that leak into the bloodstream. These scarce proteinsand their breakdown products are known as tumor biomarkers. However, collecting sufficient amounts of such biomarkers tomake an early and accurate cancer diagnosis is a challenge. Blood is a very complex sample to analyze, containing manydifferent proteins where the high amounts of some normal proteins mask the cancer biomarkers. Compounding thischallenge is that some biomarkers are also present in healthy people, although at lower levels, but sometimes even with themodifications or mutations that are found in greater amounts in the cancer biomarkers. Together this makes cancerbiomarkers very difficult to detect using current techniques and clinical tests.We aim to develop new techniques that will improve the detection of such biomarkers. We have designed and produced aspecialized polymer material that displays many molecular hooks to pull out small protein pieces (called peptides) fromcomplex patient samples such as blood. The peptides are then identified by a technique called mass spectrometry. Wepropose to develop five new polymers to enrich for five specific types of modified peptides that are found in malignant breastand oral cancers, but not normal tissue or benign tumors. By analyzing the unique fingerprint of these peptides we willestablish a set of biomarker proteins that will be developed as a new clinical test for breast, oral and other types of cancerand to assess treatment options. Moreover, select biomarkers will point to new drug targets to treat cancers.