Medical Specialties Commons^™

The Molecular Landscape Of Early-Stage Breast Cancer With Lymph Node Metastasis, Farhad Ghasemi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Axillary lymph nodes (ALNs) are the primary site of metastasis in breast cancer, and their involvement has implications in disease staging, prognostication, and treatment decisions. A non-invasive modality of assessing the risk of ALN metastasis can improve care in patients with early-stage breast cancer by omitting the morbidity and costs associated with axillary surgery.

This thesis explores the molecular landscape of early-stage breast cancers with ALN metastasis and shows the potential of tumour molecular signatures in predicting ALN involvement. After a systematic review of the literature, we use data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to develop molecular signatures correlated …

From Isolated Tumour Cells To Overt Lymph Node Metastases: Biological And Imaging Studies On The Development Of Experimental Lymph Node Metastases, Michael M. Lizardo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Metastatic colonization and establishment of overt lymph node (LN) tumours indicates poor prognosis for cancer patients. However, the basic biology that influences the development of LN metastasis is poorly understood due to the lack of basic animal models. The following work provides a new lymph node experimental metastasis assay (LEMA) that permits the assessment of tumour cell fate after they arrest in draining LNs. In using this new model, we discovered that only 8% of the tumour cells that arrive in the LN are successful in forming overt tumours. This work also explored the use of imaging approaches to monitor …