Abstract B65: Profiling and characterization of ethnicity-associated metabolic pathways in breast cancer.

Large variations in breast cancer incidence and survival among the various population groups in the United States continue to exist and differences in the clinical presentation of the disease between African American (AA) and European-American women have been recognized. Specifically, AA develop breast cancer at a relatively younger age, have a two-fold increased risk of developing triple-negative (TN) tumors and present more commonly with the stage IV disease, when compared with EA women. While the precise reasons for this disparity are still debated, genetic, environmental, and health care access/utilization factors may all contribute to the excessive burden of breast cancer among the AA patients. We therefore asked the question whether metabolomic differences in either breast tissue or body fluids may exist between AA and EA women that could help explain the substantial inequality in TN breast cancer-related outcomes. Metabolomics describes the science of quantifying the levels of metabolites (e.g., small molecules <1kDa) that are the byproducts of cellular metabolism. Metabolomic analysis is less complex than genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic studies (i.e., ~3,000 metabolites vs. 40,000 genes, 150,000 transcripts and 1x106 proteins) and may accentuate subtle upstream gene/protein level alterations. To date, a systematic breast cancer metabolomic analysis focusing on the distinction between AA and EA women has not been reported. Furthermore, a metabolomically derived prognostic model for TN in each of these ethnic groups has not yet been defined. The presentation will discuss our results on profiling and validating the levels of 120 metabolites in both TN breast tumors from AA and EA women and in cell lines representing the two patient groups. A subset of the functional pathways has been characterized for their activity using BIOLOG-based flux assays to identify their role in TN breast cancer. The information gleaned from this study could reveal the biochemical underpinnings of TN breast cancer health disparity Citation Format: Atsushi Terunuma, Nagireddy Putluri, Susmita Samanta, Prachi Mishra, Ewy Mathe, Tiffany H. Dorsey, Rick Kittles, Stefan Ambs. Profiling and characterization of ethnicity-associated metabolic pathways in breast cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Fifth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2012 Oct 27-30; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2012;21(10 Suppl):Abstract nr B65.