Center for the Evaluation of Biomarkers for the Early Detection of Breast Cancer

The Center for the Evaluation of Biomarkers for the Early Detection of Breast Cancer was founded in 2002 by a team of investigators led by Nicole Urban ScD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The Center is funded by a Breast Cancer Center of Excellence Award from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program. The goal of the Center and our study is to evaluate biomarkers (proteins and other substances in the blood) that can be used to detect breast cancer early in the disease process. Our vision is ultimately to develop a simple blood test that can be used with mammography to detect early stage breast cancer. The specific objectives of the Breast Cancer Early Discovery Study are:

• To validate and refine the ability of candidate biomarkers to predict disease status;
• To evaluate panels of biomarkers for use an adjunct to mammography, and to report the improvement in diagnostic performance attributable to the addition of the marker panel relative to mammography alone; and
• To identify the molecular signatures of subsets of in situ and invasive breast cancers and explore their associations with biomarkers in the panel.