Cancer research shows more results

The first medical research collaboration between UCF and Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute at Lake Nona has given way to promising research that could benefit cancer patients.

Two independent teams of cancer researchers, chemists and bioinformatics engineers have published discoveries that may lead to new methods of diagnosis and treatment of many types of cancer.

The first breakthrough evolved from a partnership between UCF chemistry professor Dr. Kevin Belfield and Sandford-Burnham associate professor and cancer researcher Dr. Masanobu Komatsu, which resulted in the discovery of a non-invasive way to first detect, then inspect, a cancerous tumor in real time to see how it is being affected by treatment, mainly focusing on breast, melanoma, cervical and ovarian cancers.

Belfield's technique first requires an injection of molecular probes into the bloodstream of an animal. The probes then bind to folate receptors, which are present in certain kinds of tumors, particularly cervical and ovarian cancers. The probes carry florescent dyes that hone only onto specific biomarkers in cancer cells. The dye-spotted tumor can then be detected by a microscope using near-infrared light, which produces a high-resolution 3D image of the tumor.

"The problem is there are few methods for early-stage cancer detection, and so that is what we are focusing on more so than finding a way to treat cancer, but a way to detect it early on so cancer does not surpass heart disease as the leading cause of deaths in the U.S.," Belfield said.

The second breakthrough is the result of the partnership between Dr. Shaojie Zhang, an assistant professor of engineering and computer science at UCF with an expertise in bioinformatics, and Dr. Ranjan Perera, an associate professor at Sanford-Burnham.

Perera and his team of biologists, which operates in a state-of-the-art genome sequencing laboratory, has been researching the role of microRNAs in melanoma for several years.

Their goal is to compare patterns between microRNAs and their gene expression in healthy melanoma cells and diseased cells with the intentions to find differences between the two that could be targeted for new diagnostics or therapeutics.

Cancer's ability to invade other tissues is particularly controlled by abnormal expression of microRNAs. Perera's team has found two different kinds of microRNAs, miR-375 and miR-34b, which could be used as novel diagnostic markers for early melanoma detection and also as therapeutic targets.

Perera's team has gathered a lot of data from cells and patient samples, but they needed someone with the expertise and computing power to help annotate and interpret the data.

In 2009, Perera met with Zhang, who was more than delighted to help Perera with his findings.

"The problem is, we want to discover which gene can detect melanoma early to be able to treat and cure it, and my team helped analyze the data for this purpose," Zhang said. "The goal of this collaboration is to discover the marker genes of melanoma, which is the most lethal type of skin cancer. We do the analysis and they extract the data for examination."

Zhang's team involves his graduate students, who played a big part in the process of analyzing Perera's data using a computer program to identify differences in gene expression and methylation patterns between healthy and diseased cells. Zhang's team provides the knowledge for doctors to use to cure skin cancer.

"The collaboration is the most important part, because nowadays science is becoming bigger and bigger and no one can do it alone. We have to collaborate with other people," Zhang said. "Cancer research is a hot topic and has been studied for more than 30 years, so we want to help in any way possible to help find a cure, especially for melanoma, as it is prevalent in people in Florida with the amount of sun we get."

For Zhang, the partnership was more than a chance for him to contribute to major cancer research, but also an important opportunity for his graduate students to gain real world experience.

"The collaboration provides good research opportunities for graduate students who want to be biomedical doctors and I am just pleased to be a part of it," Zhang said.

Aaron Curry, senior molecular biology and microbiology, believes the collaboration is a step in the right direction.

"Since I will be going into dentistry, anything that will help treat cancer will be applicable to oral cancer as well, which will enable me to properly treat patients," Curry said. "It also shows that UCF is quickly becoming more important in many fields of research."