Dr. Judit Bertran
Cancer is a systemic disease, which scientists know can travel within lymphatic and blood vessels to reach other places during the metastasis process.
A study currently underway by Judit Bertran, D.V.M., an assistant professor of surgical oncology at the UF College of Veterinary Medicine, investigates the use of lymph node mapping for patients with cancer.
“Some cancers are more likely to spread through the lymphatic vasculature; thus, it is important to identify the lymph nodes that may be affected with cancer cells,” Bertran said.
The sentinel lymph node is the first lymph node to drain the cancer cells in a given tumor location, she said, adding that in the 1960s, the sentinel lymph node concept was first proposed in human medicine and since that time, it has been an area of investigation. In the 1990s, the sentinel lymph node intraoperative mapping technique was first described.
“In veterinary medicine, this concept has been slowly adopted, but in the last decade, investigators have been validating different techniques for different type of cancers,” Bertran added. “The field of investigation is wide, with novel emerging preoperative and intraoperative lymph node mapping techniques being published.”
She is currently focusing on validating an intraoperative lymph node mapping technique that uses a green dye known as indocyanine green, or ICG, injected around the tumor and a nearby infrared camera to observe the dye fluorescence as it maps the lymphatic vessels and ultimately the sentinel lymph node.
This method of lymphatic mapping is currently been used at UF for tumors like mast cell tumors, oral malignant melanoma, anal sac adenocarcinoma, and other cutaneous tumors that may metastasize via lymphatic route.
“This technique has the potential to grow into developing more specific dyes to label different cancers with the goal of targeting cancerous lesions that may be difficult to discern in the cancer patient,” Bertran said.
