Muti receives grant to conduct breast cancer study

Paola Muti, UB epidemiologist and assistant professor of social and preventive medicine, has received a two-year, $238,000 grant from the United States Army Medical Research and Material Command to conduct the first major study of the relationship between breast-cancer risk and levels of insulin in the blood.

She also will investigate breast-cancer risk and its association with levels of male sexual hormones, or androgens; female sexual hormones, and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-I), a protein that promotes changes in breast cells.

Muti, who has been researching the role of hormones in the development of cancer, has shown in an earlier study that women with certain physical characteristics linked to high levels of testosterone-the most active androgen-may have a greater risk of developing breast cancer than women without these characteristics.

Her current study, which builds on her previous research, aims to show that the risk of developing breast cancer is associated with various hormonal conditions: increased insulin levels in the blood; increased bioavailability of IGF-1; increased levels of androgens-specifically total and free testosterone-and increased levels of estrogens, specifically total and free estradiol.

Finally, Muti hopes to show that the increased bioavailability of IGF-1 and the higher concentrations of the sexual hormones are caused by the higher insulin levels.

Blood samples to be used in this study were collected from participants recruited into the ORDET study (Hormones and Diet in the Etiology of Breast Cancer), a prospective study conducted in Northern Italy that provides a large biological specimen bank. Muti directed that project and serves as co-investigator.

"We expect to observe higher insulin levels, higher IGF-1 bioavailability, and higher sex steroid levels in blood samples from participants who later developed breast cancer than in blood samples from a control group of women who did not develop the disease," Muti said.

The Italian National Cancer Institute in Milan and Teresa Quattrin, UB associate professor of pediatrics and director of the Diabetes Center at Children's Hospital, are collaborating on the study.