TriCEM is hosting a breakfast featuring Dr. Shelley Hwang of Duke University. She will be giving a lecture titled What evolutionary models can teach us about breast cancer progression.
March 4, 2019, 8:15-9:45 am
If you are interested in attending the breakfast, please email Grace Farley at grace.farley@duke.edu, as TriCEM breakfasts are by invitation only.
More information on Dr. Hwang’s research can be found here: https://surgery.duke.edu/faculty/eun-sil-shelley-hwang-md-mph.
Abstract: “Advances in epidemiology and cancer biology have clearly established that the group of diseases currently deemed “cancers” in fact encompasses many conditions with enormous variation in biologic behavior. Decades of cancer screening have preferentially diagnosed early, asymptomatic, indolent lesions. This trend will only increase as screening technologies become ever more sensitive, leading to an epidemic of overtreatment in completely asymptomatic individuals. The treatment of many of these conditions often has unclear benefit on cancer mortality, while coming at the clear cost of treatment-related morbidity. Molecular testing may have a role in refining treatment recommendations based upon risk of progression. Further, risk modeling may yield insights about which patients derive greatest benefit from intervention. For asymptomatic tumors at low risk of cancer progression, there may be little to no benefit to treatment, whereas for more high-risk lesions, progression to invasion and metastasis may be more likely. Evolutionary models can provide testable hypotheses by which to better understand the dynamics of cancer progression, including lineage tracing and phylogenetic mapping. From this context, the case of breast precancer (ductal carcinoma in situ, DCIS) will be presented as a case study.”
