Cancer Metastasis, Invadopodia, and Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering breast cancer statistics, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), mechanisms of cancer metastasis, invadopodia formation, CRP2 actin-bundling activity, and invasion assay techniques.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC)

A subtype representing $10\text{–}15\%$ of breast cancers that lacks Estrogen Receptor, Progesterone Receptor, and Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor, conferring a poor prognosis due to an absence of targeted therapies.

Basal-like breast cancer

An aggressive and poorly characterized form of breast cancer that constitutes $75\%$ of all triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) cases.

Cancer metastasis

A cell motility process accountable for $90\%$ of deaths from solid tumors, during which cancer cells lose cell-cell contacts (adherens junctions) and break down the extracellular matrix (ECM) to invade distant tissues.

Adherens junctions

Cell-cell contact junctions that are lost by cancer cells during the initiation of solid tumor metastasis.

Intravital imaging

An optical imaging approach used to monitor and track the dynamic behavior of cells inside a living animal.

Multiphoton microscopy

An imaging technique comparable to confocal microscopy that penetrates deeper into biological tissues with less photodamage, utilized to image GFP-expressing human breast cancer tumors in live mice.

Invadopodia

Actin-based cellular protrusions containing bundled processes that secrete matrix-degrading enzymes to degrade and penetrate the extracellular matrix.

Cysteine-Rich Protein 2 (CRP2)

An actin-bundling protein implicated in invadopodia formation and hypothesized to facilitate breast cancer metastasis.

Actin-bundling protein

A class of actin-associated proteins (such as CRP2 and fascin) that cross-link actin filaments into parallel bundles within cellular extensions.

Transwell invasion assay

An in vitro migration assay where an insert well is coated with extracellular matrix as a barrier to measure whether seeded cells can invade through the barrier into the lower compartment toward a chemoattractant.

Mature invadopodia

Elongated protrusions characterized by a core of bundled/unbranched actin networks alongside microtubules and intermediate filaments extending through the basement membrane and deeper extracellular matrix.