The isotopic signature of cancer

Research Project, 2025 – 2028

Geochemical principles can be applied to the human body to detect cancer. Cancer remains a tremendous health hazard to humans, annually killing 10 million world-wide. To limit this toll, early diagnostics are key and current methods utilize biological markers in blood, urine, or tissues. However, it has not yet been explored how an isotopic signature of cancer cell proliferation gets preserved in ‘fossilized’ tissue like hair. Cancer cells uses bio-essential elements at higher rates than normal cells. As known from the geosciences, a changed cell turnover rate may discriminate between isotopes and provide the mechanisms for tracing this change - even when the source of change is small (as a tumor) and distant from the sampling site (as hair). Our preliminary results show that early prostate cancer leaves a geochemical signature that can be detected in both tissue and hair. Machine learning allows us to develop predictive models that then identify hair from a person with prostate cancer with 90% accuracy. In the proposed work, we will expand the work to other cancer forms (e.g., breast cancer and melanoma) and identify the biological underpinnings to the observed isotopic effects. For high-resolution spatial chemical mapping of tissues, ToF-SIMS analyses of biopsies and hair/fur from humans and mice are applied. Collections of hair samples will occur in the US and EU, in a collaborative effort between Lund, Chalmers, and Johns Hopkins University.