October 2023 Kathleen Arcaro, professor in the UMass Amherst Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, has been featured as a Spotlight Scholar for October 2023.
Arcaro is a pioneer in studying breast milk to understand both how breast cancer develops and how to prevent it. She describes breast milk as a “liquid biopsy,” offering unparalleled insights into breast health and future cancer risk. As she explains it, human milk contains multiple cell types, including epithelial cells from the lining of the ducts and lobules. Cancer-related DNA methylation—or changes to epigenetics affecting tumor-suppressing genes—may occur decades before cancer is ever diagnosed. Arcaro’s lab is interested in determining how DNA methylation patterns in sloughed epithelial cells can inform future breast cancer risk.
“Ultimately, I hope that this research leads to breast milk being used to accurately assess a person’s individual risk of breast cancer, allowing them to make informed decisions and modify their risk through lifestyle changes, diet, drugs, or other medical interventions,” she said.
Arcaro’s breast milk research has also investigated topics including the potential of dietary interventions to decrease cancer risk, and the immune response in milk to COVID-19 infections and immunization with an mRNA vaccine. Most recently, Arcaro and collaborator, Sallie Schneider, Director of HistoSpring, a core facility at the Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute, received a five-year, $3.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to study mammary gland permeability and how it affects milk supply, lactation outcomes and infant health.
Arcaro’s breast milk research program has received over $10 million dollars in external funding from sources including the NIH, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Avon Foundation for Women. Nearly half of her 78 peer-reviewed publications present results from her breast milk research, and she has enrolled nearly 2,000 women in her breast milk studies.
To read more about Arcaro and previous Spotlight Scholars, or to learn about the nomination process, visit the Spotlight Scholars website.