Waverly Kundysek

Introduction: Breast cancer is the second most common cancer overall. It has a relatively favorable prognosis, unless the patient exhibits distant metastases.⁵ Metastatic breast cancer is almost universally fatal within five to ten years. These statistics have unfortunately not changed over the past twenty years.³ Cancer has many methods of metastasis, including entry and survival into the circulation, lymphatics, or peritoneal space and end up in a distant organ. It Is a very complex process. Breast cancers are predominantly lymphatic in the way they metastasize. Cancer cells from the primary tumor first invade local lymphatic vessels that surround the primary tumor, then are quickly transported to the lymph node. Once in the lymphatic architecture of the node, the tumor cells form microtumors. Tumor cells can then enter the blood vessels of the node and be distributed throughout the body. Most common affected organs are the lungs, brain bones, and liver.¹ Once this occurs, the diagnosis is considered more aggressive, with a poorer prognosis and a crucial need for intensive systemic therapy.¹ Chr8q is a gene associated with higher frequencies in tumor-to-node metastasis in breast cancer, independent of tumor size.²  Methods: Whole exome sequencing technology is crucial to identifying genomic aberrations that directly relate to cancer spreading via lymph nodes.^2,6,8 This experiment aimed to apply genomic profiling to a range of cancers, including breast, ovarian, sarcoma, and renal.⁷ Researchers compared outcomes for those who had been matched to a treatment plan based off their genetic analysis to those who had not. They developed both Matching and Prognostic Scoring systems as means of comparison. ⁷ A drug was considered “matched-direct ” if it only impacted the target directly. A drug could be considered “matched-indirect” if the small-molecule inhibitors had an extremely low inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀), such as half maximal.⁷ The Matching Score was created by dividing the number of matched drugs by the number of genomic aberrations. Results: Patient’s whose genomes were mapped and profiled to specific treatment plans had higher rates of remission and survival.⁷ When based on the molecular profiling of the tumor and paired metastasis, the success rate of personalized medicine in this trial was 96%.⁶ Conclusions: By shaping every treatment plan to the specific patients’ diagnosis and genomic aberration, we can decrease mortality rates and improve the quality of life for patients diagnosed with breast cancer.

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