Description
Breast cancer is a complicated disease with several potential causes. Scientists have learned that some tumors thrive because of hormone signals, others because of an overactive growth factor like HER2, and still others because of damaged DNA repair genes like BRCA. Because of the complex nature of this cancer, patients benefit from a targeted approach to their treatment. Clinicians have several diagnostic tools in their arsenal to identify what kind of breast cancer a patient has in order to quickly start a personalized medical treatment.
In this MiniLab, you’ll dive deeper into how targeted therapies work for breast cancers driven by HER2 amplification and hormone receptor status. Students will use gel electrophoresis to assess the HER2 copy number as a molecular technique, then evaluate tissue samples via immunofluorescence slides to determine ER+ status. From the two analyses, they will stratify their patients for which therapy would be the most effective.
Materials Included in each MiniLab
Each MiniLab contains enough materials for 10 workstations, 2 – 3 students per workstation.
Materials include:
- Twelve Ready-to-Load DNA samples, and two controls
- MiniOne® PCR Marker
- Ten 2% agarose GreenGel™ GelCups
- 100 mL Tris-Borate-EDTA (TBE) buffer concentrate
- One bag of 0.65 mL microcentrifuge tubes
- One bag of 2 – 200 µL micropipette tips
