Using Metabolomics to Examine the Causes of Breast Cancer

What causes breast cancer? A few genes are implicated but they only account for 5 or 10 percent of cancer cases. Dr. Dean Jones, director of the Clinical Biomarkers Core and the Metabolomics Core of Emory’s HERCULES Center and Dr. Barbara Cohn, director of the Child Health and Development Studies set out to answer that question. Taking an exposome approach, Drs. Jones and Cohn are examining what environmental exposures occur in utero that could account for breast cancer later in life.

NPR recently covered their study and the stories of a few multigenerational participants. More about their work here.