Keys to cancer prevention may lie in genes

Cancer—a disease that will take the lives of a half-million Americans this year—casts a shadow of fear over many families.

At Delaware’s Center for Translational Cancer Research, Mary C. Farach-Carson, her colleagues and student interns from the University are seeking ways to help people with a family history of cancer gain the upper hand in battling the disease. Farach-Carson is a professor of biological sciences and director of the center, which was established in 2006.

The center, whose mission is to integrate scientific and clinical expertise to improve the quality of cancer care for patients, is a partnership of the Alfred I. du Pont Hospital for Children, the Christiana Care Health System’s Helen F. Graham Cancer Center and UD, including the University’s Delaware Biotechnology Institute.

“Thanks to this partnership, we’re now able to offer our students a unique opportunity to explore career fields in cancer genetics, while also helping local families who have a history of the disease,” Farach-Carson says.

She and genetic counselor Zohra Ali-Khan Catts, AS ’92, established the student internship program last year. Initially funded by a Transformation Grant from the College of Arts and Sciences, the internship now is a continuing initiative of the translational research center.

Becky Grey, AS ’08, a biological sciences major who worked as an intern during spring semester, says her goal is to become a genetic counselor.

“I like the field because you can monitor for a change or alteration in a gene and help prevent health problems later on,” Grey says. “I like being able to help people.”

Grey and another intern, Curtis Warren, AS ’08, worked at the Graham Cancer Center, entering and organizing data in the Family Cancer Risk Registry. This database, which Ali-Khan Catts established when the Graham Center opened in 2002, includes information on nearly 700 families—encompassing more than 15,000 individuals—from Delaware and neighboring states who either have cancer or are at high risk of developing the disease.

“Family histories are a critical tool in identifying families with risk factors for cancer, as well as other diseases,” Ali-Khan Catts says. “Five to 10 percent of all cancers are hereditary, and those are the forms of the disease we are targeting. If we can learn how to best screen high-risk patients for cancer, then we can develop methods for screening moderate- and low-risk families for the disease.”

During her internship, Grey says she gained invaluable insight into what genetic counseling entails, from meeting with patients and taking in-depth family histories to using a computer program to construct pedigrees, analyzing the genetic data for dominant or recessive traits, determining which patients are best suited for specific genetic tests and helping patients interpret their test results.

“When genetic testing is done, which requires only a small blood sample, and the results come back, we help explain what they mean,” Grey says.

“The guidance for patients who are genetically predisposed for breast cancer, for example, would be to get breast exams regularly and MRI screening. They also have increased risks for ovarian cancer, which should be monitored.”

Grey also is using her experience to help other students. This academic year, she will be assisting Farach-Carson with the development of a new undergraduate program to give UD students a competitive edge when applying to graduate school for genetic counseling. Currently, there are only 27 U.S. graduate programs in the field, and most accept fewer than a dozen students per year.

“Genetic counseling is a very small field, but it’s also an up-and-coming field,” Grey says.

For Warren, the internship has led him to conduct laboratory research on breast cancer. “In examining the genetic data in the cancer registry, we found this interesting mutation that hasn’t been studied at all,” he says.

Over the summer, Warren worked in Farach-Carson’s lab to grow a cell line derived from normal breast cells. Then the mutant gene will be introduced into the cells to see if it transforms the normal cells into cancer cells. If so, a new cancer mutation will have been identified.

—Tracey Bryant