Scientists gather with clinicians to address the central role of the lymphovascular system in the spread of cancer

Surgical oncologist Stanley Leong, M.D. is a lucky man.
His commute to work takes him across San Francisco’s famed Golden Gate Bridge, situated amid fog-shrouded hills and sea.
It was while commuting between his home in Marin County and San Francisco several years ago that he came up with the idea for the International Symposium on Cancer Metastasis and the Lymphovascular System.

Going across the bridge, it occurred to him that he was “like a cell within the car. The bridge and Highway 101 were the lymphovascular system.” The topography opened up for him in a way it had not before.

“I suddenly took out my Dictaphone and dictated during my trip — I started the symposium this way,” says Leong, who works for the UCSF at San Francisco.

The lymphovascular system plays an essential role in cancer metastasis, says Leong. In recent years a consensus has developed as to using sentinel lymph nodes as a way to predict whether or not certain cancers will metastasize.

The sentinel lymph nodes are the “guardian nodes,” as a sentinel guard in the Roman Empire guarded the palace. Before a cancer can move throughout the lymph system to become metastatic, it must pass through these nodes. Therefore examining the sentinel nodes is a fitting way to predict whether or not a cancer will spread.

“More rational therapy can be planned based on whether the cancer has spread to the sentinel lymph nodes or not,” says Leong. Treatments such as lymph node removal, chemotherapy and radiation therapy can be avoided if the sentinel nodes show no cancer cells.

The goal of this year’s International Symposium on Cancer Metastasis and the Lymphovascular System, scheduled for May 2-5 in San Francisco, is to bring scientists together with clinicians to address the central role of the lymphovascular system in the spread of cancer. The conference will take place bi-annually.

The hope is that there will be cross-fertilization among the basic scientists, radiologists, surgeons and other clinicians that will enhance the translation of basic science into clinical application and bring clinical problems to challenge the basic scientists.

Topics to be covered at the conference include the role of stem cells in cancer metastasis; the use of nanoparticles for cancer detection; the process of lymphangiogenesis and hemangiogenesis induced by cancer cells; immunity to cancer; and the molecular mechanisms of metastasis.

Among the 84 speakers is David Hoon, Ph.D., a scientist at the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, where the sentinel node procedure was developed. His lab is validating a multi-center trial in which they used molecular techniques to better detect metastasis in the sentinel node.

His work is “bench to bedside and reverse,” Hoon says. “We are really doing real-time molecular translational research.”
Marlys Witte, M.D., is a professor of surgery at the University of Arizona and an expert on the role of the lymphatic system in health and disease. The lymphatic system can keep cancer in check as well as spread cancer, she says. The conference will address how we can “take advantage of the good things that the lymphatic system does … while minimizing the bad things.”
Additional speakers include Donald Morton, M.D., who developed the sentinel lymph node concept. He will give an account of a personal journey related to his field. The acting director of the National Cancer Institute, John Niederhuber, M.D., will be a distinguished lecturer. And Napoleon Ferrara, M.D., of Genentech, will discuss his pioneering work in the field of vascular endothelial growth factors.

Funding for the conference comes from the National Cancer Institute and more than 12 drug companies. Organizers expect more than 100 scientists to attend the event, and about 25 exhibitors.

The conference will be held at Hilton Financial District Hotel, 750 Kearny St., in San Francisco. For more information or to sign up for the conference, visit www.cme.ucsf.edu or call (415) 476-5808.

Lisa Winer is a freelance writer in San Francisco.

—By Lisa Winer

Posted on April 23, 2007 11:25 AM