Inspecting the Stroma to Eliminate Metastatic Osteosarcoma
Patients with metastatic osteosarcoma have a poor overall survival rate of 20%. The importance of stromal cells in the metastatic process is becoming well established. We have preliminary data to suggest that induction of genes in the stroma may contribute to metastasis in osteosarcoma. Our hypothesis is that the molecular signals that occur between osteosarcoma cells and the surrounding stromal cells lead to metastasis. We propose to identify a metastatic signature in stromal cells by performing microarray analysis on isolated stromal cells that surround matched metastatic and non-metastatic osteosarcoma cells.