Vincent Cryns

M.D.

University of Wisconsin Madison

Professor

PLCO (Learn more about this study)

PLCO-579

Feb 7, 2020

Evaluation of dietary methionine intake and breast cancer incidence

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women regardless of race and ethnicity and is one of the leading causes of cancer death in women in the United States. Recent work into the epigenome has found epigenetic dysfunction to be a commonly occurring event in many cancer types and pre-cancerous lesions, including breast cancer. Large-scale alterations in both DNA and chromatin methylation have been implicated in the development of cancer and the exposure of certain DNA segments not normally expressed in terminally differentiated cell types. Altered histone methylation has also been implicated in the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and acquisition of a stem-like state, suggesting epigenetic dysfunction may also contribute to cancer invasiveness and chemotherapy resistance. S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) is the universal methyl donor for nucleotide and chromatin methylation and is synthesized from the essential amino acid methionine. SAM availability has been shown to fluctuate in response to dietary methionine intake, suggesting dietary methionine content plays a role in methyl group availability and may influence epigenetic dysfunction seen in breast cancer. Dietary methionine restriction is also currently being evaluated as a therapeutic strategy to target tumor cells and regress existing tumor growth as well as sensitize tumor cells to existing chemotherapies. Thus we hypothesize dietary methionine intake may influence breast cancer incidence within the PLCO dataset population.