title: Molecular mechanisms and imaging of lymphatic metastasis.
abstract: In many types of cancer, tumors metastasize through the lymphatic system to draining lymph nodes. These sentinel lymph nodes have gained increased attention as a prognostic indicator for the severity of the disease, leading to the sentinel lymph node mapping and biopsy procedure to be accepted as standard-of-care for breast cancer and melanoma. However, many limitations exist with this procedure resulting in high false negative rates. In this review we highlight the new advances in the understanding of the molecular mechanisms of lymphangiogenesis and tumor metastasis that may lead to improved strategies in the detection of the sentinel lymph nodes and therapeutic interventions to prevent further tumor spread. In addition, advances in imaging technology are allowing new approaches for anatomical mapping of lymphatic drainage patterns and molecular imaging strategies that may improve detection of metastatic tumor cells within sentinel lymph nodes.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Str. 10, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Steven T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Proulx
authors.affiliation: Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Str. 10, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland. Electronic address: michael.detmar@pharma.ethz.ch.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Detmar
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging; D006801:Humans; D008207:Lymphatic Metastasis; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*
keywords: Imaging; Lymphatic vessels; Metastasis; Tumor