Hosted By: Dr. Robbyn Anand

Title: Using bioanalytical chemistry to improve clinical outcomes of ovarian cancer

Abstract: There is an unmet need for innovative molecular tools that can assist in the clinical management of ovarian cancer. Improving the performance of existing biomarkers by reinventing their detection strategy is a compelling and underused approach to meet this need. One serum biomarker—CA125—is considered the “gold standard” in detecting and monitoring ovarian cancer, but, despite its importance in the clinic, questions remain regarding its molecular structure and role in cancer progression. Through a combination of long-read sequencing, bottom-up proteomics, AI-guided molecular structure prediction, and mutation analysis, the Whelan lab has recently developed a new model of ovarian cancer biomarker CA125. This model and its implications for the development of novel detection strategies will be described. The nature of the CA125 assay may contribute to ongoing disparities in ovarian cancer survivorship. Importantly, serum CA125 levels in Black women have been shown to be lower than levels in white women, but the molecular-level reasons for these racial differences are unknown. Current tests and algorithms employ a single CA125 cut-off value and do not consider racial/ethnic difference, which may contribute to the fact that Black ovarian cancer patients are diagnosed at later stage than white patients with concomitantly poorer clinical outcomes. Through targeted proteomics and long-read sequencing, the Whelan lab is investigating the racial differences in serum CA125 levels. Preliminary results on this project will be presented.

Biography: Dr. Rebecca Whelan is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Kansas. There, she is affiliated with the Ralph N. Adams Institute for Bioanalytical Chemistry and the KU Cancer Center. She also serves as co-director of the NIH-funded T32 Training Program in the Dynamic Aspects of Chemical Biology and a Research Project Leader in the NIH-funded Center Leveraging Big Data to Improve Women’s Health. She received her B.A. summa cum laude in English and Chemistry from Lawrence University (Appleton, WI) and did her graduate work with Richard (Dick) Zare at Stanford University, developing biosensor detectors for capillary electrophoresis separations. She was then a post-doctoral researcher with Robert (Bob) Kennedy at the University of Michigan, where she developed a new instrumental method to couple fluorescence anisotropy with CE separations. The first 14 years of Rebecca’s independent career were spent at Oberlin College, a selective liberal arts school in Northeast Ohio. There, she established a productive research group involving undergraduate researchers exclusively. Since moving to the R1 setting in 2018, Rebecca has continued to focus on applying separations, spectroscopy, nanoscience, molecular biology, and bioinformatics to addressing important unanswered questions and unmet needs in women’s health.