Over 500,000 people in the United States and over 8 million people worldwide are dying from cancer every year. As people live longer, the incidence of cancer is rising worldwide, and the disease is expected to strike over 20 million people annually by 2030.
Everyone has been or will be touched by cancer in some way during their lifetime. Thanks to years of dedication and commitment to research we’ve made enormous advances in the prevention and treatment of cancer, But there is still a lot of work to be done.
In this course, physicians and scientists at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine explain how cancer spreads or metastasizes. We’ll describe the major theories of metastasis and then describe the biology behind the steps in metastasis. The course also describes the major organs targeted by metastasis and describes how metastases harm the patient.
Syllabus
Week 1
1 hour to complete
History and Overview of Metastasis
In this first module, we’ll concentrate on the history and overview of metastasis and give you a flavor of how cancer is defined as well as some of the history surrounding how we began to understand metastasis.
5 videos (Total 18 min)
1 hour to complete
Primary Tumor Growth and Neoangiogenesis
In this module, we’ll focus on uncontrolled cell division, which is a defining property of cancer, as well as mutation and neoangiogenesis and their roles in tumor formation. We’ll also take a look at a primary tumor microenvironment and its component cell types.
5 videos (Total 36 min)
WEEK
2
1 hour to complete
EMT / Invasion / Intravasation
During this module, we’ll turn our attention to the next steps after the initial primary tumor formation, epithelial to mesenchymal transition of cancer cells, and local tumor invasion and intravasation into blood or lymph vessels.
4 videos (Total 18 min)
1 hour to complete
Survival in the Circulation and Extravasation
We’ll now take a close look at cancer survival within the circulation, the role of the circulatory system in metastasis, the genetic determinants of metastatic potential, signaling mechanisms, chemokines, the dock and lock hypothesis, and extravasation.
6 videos (Total 31 min)
WEEK
3
1 hour to complete
Dormancy and Secondary Tumor Growth
In this module, we’ll focus on dormancy and secondary tumor growth and how they contribute to the lethality of cancer.
6 videos (Total 31 min)
Kenneth J. Pienta, M.D.
The Donald S. Coffey Professor of Urology
Johns Hopkins University
Sarah Amend
Prostate Cancer Researcher
Johns Hopkins University
Kenneth Valkenburg
Prostate Cancer Researcher
Johns Hopkins University
Jelani Zarif
Prostate Cancer Researcher
Instructor, Johns Hopkins University
Haley Axelrod
Prostate Cancer Researcher
Haley is a graduate student in the Cellular and Molecular Medicine program at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.