Webinar Hosted by PerkinElmer: Immune-Cancer Interactions in Tumor-Draining Lymph Nodes: Novel Prognostic and Mechanistic Insights for Breast Cancer

Date:  Friday, December 13, 2013

Time:  10:00 am Pacific | 1:00 pm Eastern | 6:00 pm GMT

Presenter:  Peter  P. Lee, MD, City of Hope Cancer Center

Whether Tumor-draining lymph nodes (TDLNs) are invaded by cancer cells is a key prognostic indicator for patients with breast and other cancers. Lymph nodes are immune organs and TDLNs are key sites of tumor-immune interactions. We have shown that TDLNs may be immunologically altered and demonstrated the clinical significance of T cell and dendritic cell (DC) decreases in predicting relapse in breast cancer.

To move beyond numerical changes to address spatial re-organization of cells, our group has developed a quantitative image analysis approach that incorporates the following:

• multi-color tissue staining
• high-resolution, automated whole-section imaging
• image analysis algorithms that utilize machine-learning to identify cell types and locations
• spatial statistical analysis to obtain accurate numerical and spatial data of each immune cell subtype in tumor and TDLN samples

This webinar will outline our novel approach in providing an objective assessment of immune alterations within tumors and TDLNs, and data generated are of prognostic and mechanistic value.