PhD defence Dina Maria Sara Dieleman

Keywords: Breast cancer, Microbiome, Sentinel node, Morphology

"Exploring Novel Prognostic and Predictive Factors in Breast Cancer: Breast microbiota and sentinel lymph node morphology"

This thesis explores two new ways to better understand breast cancer and to improve the prediction of treatment response and patient prognosis. First, it studies the bacteria present in breast cancer tissue. The results show that breast cancer tissue contains its own bacterial community, and that this community can change after chemotherapy. However, bacterial density before therapy did not clearly predict how well treatment worked. A stronger link was found for macrophages: tumors with more of this type of immune cell before treatment responded better to chemotherapy. Second, the thesis shows that the shape and cell makeup of the sentinel lymph node, which is the first lymph node that drains the breast tumor, can give useful information about a patient’s outlook. The research also found that germinal centers, which are certain immune structures in lymph nodes, were related to stronger immune activity in the tumor. Together, these findings may help improve future breast cancer prediction and care.

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