NYPOG Mission NYPOG will translate basic science discoveries regarding cancer cell dissemination and formation of metastases into clinical practice. Vision NYPOG will bring cancer cell dissemination biomarkers and therapeutic targets to clinical practice. Goals: To establish the analytic validity and clinical validity of metastasis biomarkers and their utility in multi-racial populations. To develop minimally invasive approaches for testing the dissemination potential of every cancer. To identify therapeutic approaches targeting cancer cell dissemination and metastasis formation. Objectives: To establish the clinical validity of metastasis biomarkers (TMEM, MenaCalc, and combined TMEM-MenaCalc scores) for prognosis in early breast cancer and determine the clinical utility for predicting benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy. To determine the clinical validity of metastasis biomarkers in residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. To develop an MRI-based algorithm that may be used to determine the cancer dissemination potential and response to inhibitors of dissemination by minimally invasive approaches. To develop approaches for the automated evaluation of the pro-metastatic tumor microenvironment components (e.g. MenaCalc, stem, dormant and invasive cancer cells).
