Research on lymph node metastases using molecular methods

Research areas

Breast, endometrial, and cervical cancers

Research project

Identify macrometastases, micrometastases, and isolated tumor cells within the lymph nodes by the quantitative determination of cytokeratin 19 mRNA (selectively expressed by carcinomas), using the OSNA (One Step Nucleic Acid Amplification) method. OSNA is an isothermal (65 °C) procedure based on rapid nucleic acid amplification technology (RT-LAMP: real-time loop mediated isothermal amplification) to detect the expression level of cytokeratin 19 (CK19) mRNA, a breast cancer cell marker. RT-LAMP is characterized by the use of six different primers that recognize six different regions of the sequence of interest, thus ensuring a high specificity.

Ongoing research objectives

To evaluate the effectiveness of the OSNA method for the detection of lymph node metastases as an alternative to the traditional morphological approach.