Reflection on leidy’s seminar
- 1. Reflection on Leidy’s Seminar In this week seminar we had as a guest Leidy Alvarado, who shared with us her current research conducted in Purdue University located in Indiana. She is a current Ph.D. student focusing on the area of breast cancer. The title of her seminar was: Early detection of recurrent breast cancer using metabolite profiling. Breast cancer is still the leading cause of death among women worldwide. In this experiment they used a combination of NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) and GC x GC – MS (two- dimensional gas chromatography – mass spectrometry) to analyze the metabolite profiling. They used metabolite profiling because it can detect diseases based on a panel of small molecules. Metabolite profiling has various applications like early diagnosis, and the investigation of metabolites pathways, among others. Understanding that blood serum metabolite was sensitive to recurrent breast cancer, they applied metabolite profiling to investigate it. From the forty biomarkers researchers had initially, they narrowed it down to eleven basing it on their ranked performance. The biomarkers were chosen using the method of sensitivity vs. specificity. Sensitivity means the proportion of actual positives (sick people with the condition) and specificity means the proportion of negatives (healthy people without the condition). In the phase of clinical diagnosis metabolite profiling detected 75% of recurring patients compared with CA 27.29 marker that detected only 16%. As result of the improved screening 55% of the recurring patients were diagnosed thirteen months earlier than by traditional clinical diagnosis. As they deliberated their results, they stated that there would be an improvement on early detection and better treatments as result of the combined detection procedure. These were just some of the terms she shared with us and as a student who wants to
- 2. study in the area of oncology I found it very interesting. One thing she mentioned that touched me was when you have a PhD you will always be learning but you become a leader. Hearing those words from her inspired me to keep firm in what I want, take risks and embrace every opportunity that comes in my life.