All in the saliva: Lankan prof leads pioneering research on oral cancer | Print Edition
By Kumudini Hettiarachchi
View (s):She was extensively involved in biomedical research, and a family tragedy propelled her toward early detection of oral cancer through non-invasive sampling.
Whether she's sifting through microscopes in her laboratory in Brisbane, Australia or collecting saliva samples from people who are afraid if they have oral cancer, her efforts have paid off with the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ( USA)) nods to her biomarker.
The face behind this achievement is Associate Professor Chamindie Punyadeera, mostly from Sri Lanka. She is the director of the Saliva and Liquid Biopsy Translational Laboratory at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) at the School of Biomedical Sciences, Brisbane.
Prof Punyadeera takes a saliva sample
Prof. Punyadeera (50) describes herself as a “research-intensive academic” and is an innovator, translational biomedical researcher and strong advocate of women in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine). She has a team of 14 researchers including 10 PhD students, two of whom are from Sri Lanka.
Her simple explanation for her work is that she uses non-invasive sampling methods (such as human saliva) for the early detection of cancer and heart disease. (See box)
The tragedy that prompted Prof. Punyadeera to launch a research program on head and neck cancer (oral cancer and throat cancer are the two main subspecies) was very personal and close to home.
“My brother-in-law was diagnosed with a severe form of head and neck cancer in 2005 and unfortunately died of the disease within six months. This is because when he was diagnosed, cancer was in the late stages and the cancer had spread to other vital organs. So there is an unmet clinical need to detect head and neck cancer early, ”she says.
During those troubled times of the pandemic, when her lab was closed for two to three months and her clinical trials were suspended for more than six months, she says people of Brisbane were "very happy" with the COVID-19 case Numbers were minimal compared to the rest of the world.
"Yes, balancing family life with a busy work life is a challenge," she admits and was "my struggle," but her husband, Athanasios Mylonas, an electrician / electrical engineer, is very supportive while her Amma and Thaththa are only one kilometer from their home. "You help me a lot." There is some sadness as her brother Lasath works at Standard Bank in South Africa and they were unable to have a family reunion due to COVID-19.
Her only son, Vasileios Nirvan Mylonas, is on the Queensland Academy's International Baccalaureate Program for Science, Mathematics and Technology ……… "It's too early to say if he would follow in my footsteps".
Prof. Punyadeera had left Sri Lanka as a little girl of 11 years old in 1982 when her Thaththa and Amma left for Botswana to work. She had returned home in 1984 to complete her secondary education (grades 8-12) at the Holy Family Monastery in Bambalapitiya. In 1990 she left her home country again for her undergraduate studies at the University of Botswana, followed by an MPhil and PhD at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
She completed her elementary school at the Girls' High School in Mount Lavinia, where they also lived in Colombo. The ancestral seat of her amma was in Tangalle and that of her Thaththa in Unawatuna, Galle.
There is a note of nostalgia as Prof. Punyadeera says that her hobbies of reading, jogging and swimming include watching Sri Lankan teledramas.
"Of course I miss Sri Lanka," she says, sounding slightly indignant that such a request can even be made.
“Even though I have a Dutch passport, my DNA is Sri Lankan. My parents are both proud Sri Lankans and I grew up in a culture that values our identity and knows our roots. This becomes very important when you live outside of Sri Lanka for so long, ”says Prof. Punyadeera.
In terms of their work, their goals are firmly in focus ……… .. “We use liquid biopsy (the use of body fluids instead of traditional tumor tissue) to obtain results in head and neck cancer patients, liver cancer, and brain tumors. predict lung cancer. "
During this time, Prof. Punyadeera recently received research funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia to develop a biosensor that predicts outcomes in patients with heart failure, using the saliva sample as a non-invasive method.
The impact of such research will have far-reaching benefits as more than 38 million people worldwide have heart failure, approximately 50% of whom die within five years.
| Biomarkers as a diagnostic test A brand new research program to study biomarkers in human saliva to see if there are any of interest that can be used as a diagnostic test! This is what Associate Professor Chamindie Punyadeera pioneered in Australia. A biomarker was defined by the International Chemical Safety Program under the direction of the World Health Organization (WHO) as “any substance, structure or process that can be measured in the body or its products and that influences or predicts the occurrence of consequences or diseases”. WHO). When asked how it will affect people, Prof. Punyadeera says saliva samples from people at higher risk for oral cancer can be sent to a company called Viome in the US for analysis. A higher risk of oral cancer, which is also of great concern to Sri Lanka, is those who chew betel nut, smoke and drink excessively. People who have poor oral hygiene, have multiple sexual partners, have oral sex, or are immunocompromised, such as those with HIV / AIDS, are more prone to developing throat cancer. To explain the processes, Prof. Punyadeera says that they used the human microbiome (bacteria in the mouth) as a source of biomarkers to help them see if they could detect mouth and throat cancer early. “We have published research on the subject and I have a PhD student, Dr. Yenkai Lim, who finished the QUT with an outstanding piece of work. I did research with a US-based company to use their high-throughput metatranscriptomics platform combined with artificial intelligence and machine learning to advance our research, ”says Prof. Punyadeera. Prof. Punyadeera was the inventor of the patent and the intellectual property was transferred to the company. The company recently received FDA approval under the Breakthrough Device Designation. To get back to the technical details, she says that her team used her platform to develop a biomarker panel using bacterial transcriptomics (gene expression changes) to detect oral and throat cancer at an early stage. Her team's pioneering research has been named "The Salivary Metatranscriptome as an Accurate Diagnostic Indicator of Oral Cancer" with authors Guruduth Banavar, Oyetunji Ogundijo, Ryan Toma, Sathyapriya Rajagopal, Yenkai Lim, Kai Dun Tang, Francine Camacho, Pedro Torres, Stephanie Gline, Matthew Parks , Liz Kenny, Nevenka Dimitrova, Ally Perlina, Hal Tily, Salomon Amar, Momchilo Vuyisich, Chamindie Punyadeera, 2021, Research Square. Some of the other important studies from Prof. Punyadeera's laboratory are: 'Oral microbiome: a new biomarker reservoir for oral and oropharyngeal cancers'; "The salivary microbiome profiles are only minimally affected by the collection method or DNA extraction protocols"; "The Power of an Oral Microbiome Biomarker Panel in Predicting Oral and Oropharyngeal Cancer"; and "Chemoradiotherapy alters the oral microbiome and metabolic profile in patients with oral cancer and oropharyngeal cancer". | |
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