The Campion Fund is proud to announce the two winners of the Campion Fund Prize. Dr. Alisa Suen and Dr. Kristen Upson were presented with the junior scientist awards at this year’s annual meeting of Triangle Consortium for Reproductive Biology (TCRB), hosted at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. This is the second year in which the Campion Fund has awarded two prizes for noteworthy research in the field of reproductive health. The annual meeting was once again a success! Dr. Genevieve Neal-Perry gave the Keynote Address to start the day. Next, several oral presentations were given to highlight progress in the field and new findings in reproductive biology. Throughout the day, poster abstracts could be viewed, demonstrating collaborative research to help advance our understanding of uterine fibroids as well as other unexplained topics in reproductive health . Thank you to all scientist who submitted abstracts to the Campion Fund Prize competition.
Here are summaries of the research conducted by our two awardees.
Dr. Alisa Suen is a member of the Reproductive and Development Biology Laboratory, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Curriculum in Toxicology, University of North Carolina. She received the Campion Fund Award for Best Oral Presentation by a junior investigator for her study conducted under Dr. Carmen Williams. Dr. Suen and her colleagues studied a mouse model of neonatal xenoestrogen exposure. In the model 95% of animals treated with pharmacological doses of a synthetic estrogen (DES) and 35% of animals treated with physiological doses of a phytoestrogen (genistein) develop uterine cancer (adenocarcinoma) by 18 months of age. Removal of the animals’ ovaries before puberty prevents the development of this cancer, suggesting that the cancer development depends on endogenous estrogen exposure.
Dr. Suen presented work that showed that a cancer-associated transcription factor called Sine oculis-related homeobox 1 (SIX1) is permanently expressed in the uterus after neonatal xenoestrogen exposure (DES or genistein). This SIX1 expression is localized to abnormal uterine basal cells that establish themselves and proliferate as the animals age. Dr Suen and colleagues compared Six1 mRNA SIX expression patterns and cellular histology in control and neonatal DES and genistein treated mice and tested if removal of the ovaries changed the aberrant Six1 mRNA expression. Indeed, at 6 months of age DES and genistein treatment showed increases in Six1 mRNA expression. The SIX1 protein was observed in all cells in hyperplastic and neoplastic lesions. Removal of the ovaries caused the Six1 mRNA expression to decrease. However, DES- intact or adult ovariectomzed mice had higher expression. These findings suggest that uterine SIX1 expression is initiated by neonatal DES treatment and perpetuated by the endogenous hormones that begin at puberty. In the study the SIX1 expression patterns are associated with histopathological changes suggesting that SIX1 might have a role in the formation of uterine cancer.
Dr. Kristen Upson is a member of the epidemiology team headed by Dr. Donna Baird at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Using data from the Study of Environment, Lifestyle and Fibroids (SELF), a study of 1,696 African-American women ages 23-34 years who were screened by ultrasound for fibroids at enrollment, she studied early life factors by questionnaire. The factor most strongly associated with fibroids was the birth decade of the mother. The finding that subjects whose mothers were born in the 1950s had a 40% increase risk of fibroids compared to those with mothers born in the 1960s was striking. This association was modest for those whose mothers where born in the 1940s. If the participant was the firstborn the association was stronger.
Although further studies need to be conducted, the results are provocative. Could it be that the broad application of persistent pesticides during the decades studied, particularly in the 1950s contributed to the risk? What other environmental factors might be a work? The fact that the association was stronger among firstborn could be explained that the amount of pesticides in the body decreases with a mother’s parity (number of births) and breastfeeding. This epidemiological study points to early life exposure to environmental factors could be a critical window for fibroid development in adulthood.