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. 2013 Mar;16(1):1-11.
doi: 10.4048/jbc.2013.16.1.1. Epub 2013 Mar 31.

Potential applications of quantum dots in mapping sentinel lymph node and detection of micrometastases in breast carcinoma

Feroz Alam  1 , Neha Yadav
Affiliations

Potential applications of quantum dots in mapping sentinel lymph node and detection of micrometastases in breast carcinoma

Feroz Alam et al. J Breast Cancer. 2013 Mar.

Abstract

Breast cancer cure aims at complete elimination of malignant cells and essentially requires detection and treatment of any micrometastases. Here, we present a review of the current methods in use and the potential role of the quantum dots (QDs) in detection and visualization of sentinel lymph node and micrometastases in breast cancer patients. The traditional histopathological, immunohistochemical, and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction procedures being used for micrometastases detection had serious drawbacks of high false negativity, specificity variations and false positivity of the results. Photon emission fluorescence multiplexing characteristics of the quantum dots make them potentially ideal probes for studying the dynamics of cellular processes over time such as continuous tracking of cell migration, differentiation, and metastases. In breast cancer, QDs based molecular and genomic detections had an unparallel high sensitivity and specificity.

Keywords: Breast neoplasms; Early detection of cancer; Neoplasm micrometastasis; Quantum dots; Sentinel lymph node.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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