BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most common cancer type in women, with 276,480 women diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States in 2020.1 Death from breast cancer is usually caused by metastasis to distant sites, rather than from the primary tumor itself.2 Regional spread of breast cancer to the tumor draining lymph nodes (TDLN) often precedes further dissemination to the rest of the body, and as such is an important prognostic tool during cancer diagnosis and staging.3 During tumor growth, multiple immune cells and stromal cells in both the primary tumor microenvironment (pTME) and the TDLN undergo changes that promote tumor growth, metastasis and immune evasion in the TDLN and to the rest of the body. Among breast cancer subtypes, triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is one of the most aggressive, and is most likely to be resistant to traditional chemotherapies, has the worst 5-year survival percentage, regardless of stage.4 Additionally, human growth factor receptor-2 (Her2) positive breast cancers are aggressive breast cancers as well, and Her2+ breast cancers are most likely to metastasize to the TDLN.5
PROBLEM: Little is known about how breast cancer cells induce genetic or transcriptomic changes in immune cells and stromal cells in the lymph node microenvironment and pTME as cancer cells metastasize to the TDLN.
OBJECTIVE: To elucidate changes observed in immune and stromal cells in the TDLN via single cell sequencing, and to quantify changes in exhaustion status of lymphocytes in the metastatic TDLN microenvironment that may be causal of lymph node metastasis.
METHODS: With a bioinformatics approach on single cell RNA sequencing, and with flow cytometry, we will measure changes in the transcriptomes of cells in the primary tumor microenvironment and the TDLN and compare changes in the primary site, tumor draining lymph node, and a normal lymph node. We measure changes in the expression of canonical exhaustion markers and inhibitory receptors: Tim-3, Lag-3, Tigit, CTLA-4, PD-1, and CD160 in lymphocytes in the metastatic TDLN and nonmetastatic spleens in Balb/c mice with flow cytometry. Additionally, we measured changes in myeloid and lymphoid populations in the spleens and lymph nodes with flow cytometry.
RESULTS: B cell accumulation was observed in both the single cell RNA sequencing analysis and via flow cytometry in both the metastatic TDLN itself and in the spleens of mice with metastasis to the TDLN. Increased RNA of exhaustion markers in CD8+ T cells was observed in the primary tumor samples. Additionally, a trend of increased Natural Killer cells, B cells, naive and memory CD4+ and CD8+ T cells expressing canonical exhaustion markers was observed in both the metastatic TDLNs and the spleens of mice with cancer, indicating systemic immune suppression may occur as TNBCs and Her2+ breast cancers metastasize to the TDLN. / 2022-11-24T00:00:00Z
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/43469 |
| Date | 24 November 2021 |
| Creators | Muscarella Jr., Ronald Anthony |
| Contributors | Jones, Dennis, Snyder-Cappione, Jennifer |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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