Imaging Biomarkers And Their Implications For Tumor Heterogeneity

To our knowledge, our study was the first to correlate the mean of microvessel density with the type of cells (cystitis vs malignant). From the ROC curve, by applying the cut off value = 76.13 MVD, the higher MVD above the cut off value are cystitis with sensitivity (90%), specificity (91%). P value (0.001) which is statistically highly significant

Cancer, medically called ‘tumorigenesis’ (Thaker, Lutgendorf, & Sood, 2007, p.430) occurs when cells in the body orient themselves for malignant growth. Such cells show ‘self-sufficiency in growth signals’, are ‘insensitive to anti-growth signals’ and have ‘limitless replicative potential’ (Thaker, Lutgendorf, & Sood, 2007, p.430). Once a particular set of cells become malignant, the malignancy can spread to other set of cells in different organs due to ‘crosstalk’ between the affected cells and their surrounding ‘tissues’ and ‘micro-environments’(Thaker, Lutgendorf, & Sood, 2007, p.430).

According to statistics published by the American Cancer Society, there will be an estimated 1.5 million new cancer cases diagnosed each year over the next decade. What factors contribute to the yearly incidence

Cancer is listed as the second most common cause of death in western countries; particularly, in adults. Though it has a long antiquity, its prevalence and incidence today is pervasive and the war on cancer has not been promising. Malignant neoplasia is characterized by uncontrolled growth and the ability to metastasize or spread from the original site. Cancer results from mutations that promote cell proliferation and inhibit cell adhesion (metastasis). According to the National Cancer Institute (2016), “Cancer can also spread regionally,

Cancer is a leading cause of death and devastating experiences for patients’ family members and close friends. The disease undermines the emotional wellbeing of the survivors during and after treatment. It often affects the physical appearance and exposes the family members to financial constraints thereby leading to depression, reduced productivity at workplaces and many other social problems. However, the controversies over the causes of cancer continue to impact the awareness campaigns and the general population attitude towards treatment options. According to Thun, Linet, Cerhan, Haiman, and Schottenfeld (2017), many people believe that gene composition is the leading risk factor for cancer. In contrast, etiological studies have confirmed

They analyzed the genetic profiles of these patients to study a concept known as the “double-hit hypothesis”, which is a widely accepted theory in the field of cancer.

Lay Abstract: Prostate cancer is a complex disease with multiple tumors originating independently at different stages of growth. Although morphological differences (morphological heterogeneity) has been well recognized, the underlying molecular complexity in each tumor foci has not been well studied. Tumor growth in each foci can be determined by independent driver molecular aberration(s). Understanding the molecular level of differences (molecular heterogeneity) in each tumor foci would help to differentiate the patients who may undergo indolent or aggressive disease course. Further, morphological differences mostly help to understand the stage of the disease, but it is not possible to select appropriate targeted therapy. If different tumor foci carry different driver molecular aberrations, targeted therapy for single molecular aberrations may not yield the curative benefit to the patients. Conventionally, systematic sampling of large tumor foci or high Gleason grade tumor foci have been considered for various genetic and molecular studies. In this approach smaller tumor foci with important driver molecular aberration and high metastatic potential can be easily missed. Therefore, using our novel approach, we propose to screen the entire prostate tissue (whole-mount prostatectomy specimen mounted on large glass slide) to assess molecular differences in each tumor foci using well characterized prostate cancer specific molecular markers.

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide as it can develop in almost any organ or tissue. Significant advances in understanding the cellular basis of cancer and the underlying biological mechanisms of tumour has been vastly improved in the recent years (Jiang et al. 1994). Cancer is a genetic disease which requires a series of mutation during mitosis to develop, its characteristics can be associated with their ability to grow and divide abnormal cells uncontrollable while in the mean time invade and cause nearby blood vessels to serve its need. Even though many people are affected by cancer today, the abilities which cancer cells have make it hard to find a single effective treatment for cancer. The focus of research now lies

Separation of breast carcinomas into subtypes can be used to determine if this type gives prognostic information for tumor behavior (e.g. the ability to metastasize) or predicts it's to various therapies . For example , some breast cancer types are associated with positive clinical outcome. In addition to other types of breast cancer have favorable sites of metastasis e.g. lobular cancers may spread beneath the epithelium in the gastrointestinal and genitourinary tracts so knowing factors that have the ability to predict patient's prognosis and separate them into different risk groups is a preference in cancer research (Sims et al., 2007).

Stahl and Hoffman hypothesized that cancer was composed of fermenting and degenerating lymph with varying density, acidity and alkalinity.

The Department of Chemistry, Laboratory and Pathology at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA conducted a study to increase the automated number of the counting method for CTCs in whole blood using their own recently developed ensemble-decision aliquot ranking or eDAR. While these cells were reported about 150 years ago, they have continued to be a useful tool in diagnosis cancer and its treatment (Zhao et al., 2013). These particular cells has been discovered in patients with different kinds of cancer (Zhao et al., 2013). Unfortunately, however, observation of these cells comes at a timely cost. Up until recently it took

In the case of multicentric development, multiple small tumors may exhibit a different enhancement pattern on CT, reflecting different degrees of tumor

Regarding racial disparity in the prevalence of ETS gene fusions and SPINK1 expression, we observed higher incidence of SPINK1+ in AA compared to CA. It is important to note that we have observed about 21.1% of the cases negative for ERG and SPINK1 in all tumor foci (Table 1). Moreover, we did not observe any patient sample that is positive for ERG or SPINK1 in all tumor foci indicating the extent of molecular heterogeneity and independent clonal origin of each tumor foci with distinct driver molecular aberrations. Therefore, we evaluated all the ERG/SPINK1- negative and positive cases for ETV1 by RNA-ISH and thus far, we have completed evaluation of 132 cases (78, CA, 33, AA and others-screening in progress) and observed 6.06% of the cases positive for ERG+/SPINK1+/ETV1+ (triple marker positive) in a mutually exclusive manner (Table 2; Figure 6). We also observed cases with ERG+ and SPINK1+ expression either in immediately adjacent tumor foci with different Gleason pattern (Figure 8) or at a distant tumor foci of varying size and Gleason pattern (Figure 10). Similar to ERG+ and SPINK1+ expression in adjacent tumor foci we observed cases with ERG+ and ETV1+ expression in immediately adjacent tumor foci (Figure 9). It is for the first time we have demonstrated the molecular heterogeneity of PCa using driver molecular aberrations by preserving the spatial tumor landscape for direct qualitative and quantitative assessment under

Our project will investigate in three Specific Aims by a team of complementary and multidisciplinary experts on PDAC clinical treatment and translational cancer research. The team will focus on developing new PDAC treatments by characterizing circulating tumor cells (CTCs) using blood and tissues from PDAC patients in our on-going clinical trials. The translational significance of our work is that CTCs represent the metastatic and therapeutic resistant tumor cells that spread, travel and grow in other organs despite therapy. CTCs may thus harbor the malignant properties of metastasis and

The high accuracy tissue microarray instrument obtains tissue cores from predefined areas of tissue sample paraffin blocks and places them precisely on an empty recipient block. Tissue sections of 5 mm can be prepared from the tissue microarray blocks to generate tissue microarray slides for molecular and IHC applications. (Kittaneh et al.2013)