Circulating Epigenetic Biomarkers in Cancer (Charlotte Proudhon)
Episode 99
May 4, 2023
In this episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we caught up with Charlotte Proudhon from the Institut for Environmental and Occupational Health in Rennes to talk about her work on circulating tumor DNA and circulating Epi-mutations as biomarkers in cancer.
Charlotte Proudhon started out her research career by investigating circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA). This kind of DNA is shed into the bloodstream by apoptotic tumor cells and can be analyzed after collection by a simple blood draw, which makes it a very useful biomarker for cancer. Using this approach cancers can be identified by their unique mutational fingerprint. However, soon the limitations of this approach became apparent and the fact that this ctDNA is actually shed into the bloodstream as nucleosomal particles was utilized by the Proudhon team and now the methylation fingerprint of the LINE-1 repeats is used as a biomarker for cancer diagnosis and monitoring of the success of a cancer treatment.