PRACTICAL - Molecular subtypes of breast cancer

- Part 1 Introduction to the anatomy and histology of the breast

Objective: To become familiar with the anatomy and histology of the normal breast and breast cancer

- Part 2 Molecular subtypes of breast cancer
Objective: To become familiar with the most common molecular subtypes of breast cancer

- Part 3 Treatment options for molecular subtypes of breast cancer
Objective: To understand why molecular subtype determines the treatment options for a patientMOLECULAR SUBTYPES OF BREAST CANCER

Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in women. Approximately one in eight Australian women will be diagnosed with this disease by the time they turn 85. For many years treatment for breast cancer involved surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Unfortunately chemotherapy and radiotherapy are quite non-specific treatments. The side effects are that they affect normal cells as well as cancer cells. There are now more specific treatments called targeted therapies being developed. The aim of these is to direct treatment to cancer cells while not affecting normal cells.

The targeted cancer treatments are based on observations that cancer cells express different cellular markers from normal cells. Some of the markers that are different between cancer cells and normal cells are receptors that are attached to the plasma membrane of cells. Often these receptors are molecules that bind hormones that regulate cell growth and development.

In this Prac you will examine sections of normal mammary tissue and breast cancer tissues to understand how this disease affects the organization of cells in the breast. This enables breast cancers to be divided into different breast cancer subtypes based on the morphology of the tissue that is seen microscopically.

You will then examine cells from the breast cancer patients that have been stained to show the presence of key hormone receptors. The presence of these receptors is another way of classifying breast cancers histologically.

Both histological subtyping and receptor status are important in deciding which type of treatment should be used for breast cancer.

To investigate how targeted breast cancer treatments work you will examine the effects of different treatments on breast cancer cells grown in vitro (in culture). These include a drug that targets cell division, hormone antagonist drugs that bind to specific receptors and an antibody based drug.

Overall aims of the practical

Part 1 Introduction to the anatomy and histology of the breast

Objective: To become familiar with the anatomy and histology of the breast.
Task: Examine normal and diseased breast tissue and obtain photos of the specimens for your report. Correctly identify and label structures of the breast and different cell types present.

Part 2 Molecular subtypes of breast cancer

Objective: To become familiar with the most common molecular subtypes of breast cancer
Task: Examine pre-prepared slides of the breast cancer cells from 3 different patients. Correctly diagnose/classify the receptor status (Estrogen receptor(ER)/ Progesterone receptor (PR) and Human epidermal growth factor 2 receptor (HER2)) of the 3 patients using immunocytochemistry (ICC).

Part 3 Treatment options for molecular subtypes of breast cancer

Objective: To understand why molecular subtype determines the treatment options for a patient

Task: Perform a cell proliferation assay on cells treated with different classes of anticancer drugs in culture. Share results with the class to collect a full set of data. Discuss the results of the cell proliferation assay as a group.

Calculate how effective each drug is at reducing cell proliferation compared to the untreated cells.

Suggest an appropriate drug treatment for each of the patients based on the molecular subtype of their cancers.

Discuss what other factors need to be considered with drug treatment regimes.

Attachment:- PRACTICAL -MOLECULAR SUBTYPES OF BREAST CANCER.rar