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2020 Tad Smith & Caroline Fitzgibbons-PCF Young Investigator Award

Exploration of Metabolomics for the Prevention of Lethal Prostate Cancer

Rebecca Graff, ScD

University of California, San Francisco

Mentors: June Chan, ScD; Peter Carroll, MD, MPH; John Witte, PhD

Description:

  • Metabolic alterations are known to play a role in the development and progression of prostate cancer. It is unknown whether metabolic alterations may be used as biomarkers to predict patient outcomes or inform clinical treatment selection.
  • Dr. Rebecca Graff is studying the potential for metabolic alterations as biomarkers to identify patients with localized prostate cancer who are at risk for developing lethal disease.
  • In this project, Dr. Graff will comprehensively characterize the metabolites found in plasma from lethal vs. indolent prostate cancer cases, and identify the metabolic features that predict the development of lethal disease.
  • Whether any of the prognostic metabolites differ according to obesity status will be determined.
  • A prognostic metabolite signature will be validated using pre-and post-diagnostic blood samples from large, independent prostate cancer patient cohorts.
  • If successful, this project will result in a new blood-based biomarker that can identify patients who will develop lethal prostate cancer, enabling more informed treatment decisions to be made.

What this means to patients: Dr. Graff is profiling metabolite alterations in prostatecancer patients in order todevelop a biomarker that can be used to identify whichpatients are at highest risk for developing lethal disease. This will enable moreinformed treatment decisions for patients and may be leveraged for efforts todevelop new targeted treatments.