Etiology of the Platelet-Cancer Metastatic Pathway - A Study of Inflammatory Markers, Platelet Characteristics and Metastatic Surrogates in Cancer Patients and Controls

Hypotheses for proposed study

Platelet reactivity as measured by percentage aggregation in response to agonists such as ADP is increased in patients with metastatic cancer compared to age sex and ethnicity matched controls.

Platelet activation as measured by release of cytokines and vasoactive substances such as VEGF, TGF-beta, and PDGF is increased in patients with metastatic cancer compared to age sex and ethnicity matched controls.

Study Design:

Single center matched case control design; matching variables are age, sex and ethnicity

Inclusion Criteria

Cases:

25 adult patients (>18 years old) with any form of metastatic or advanced stage (TNM stage III or equivalent) solid adenocarcinoma including breast, colon, and lung cancer will be eligible for inclusion in this study with no restrictions related to previous chemotherapy, radiotherapy, biological therapy or surgical management at the time of enrollment or in the past., although we will prefer to recruit them prior to initiating chemotherapy.

Controls:

25 patients will be selected based on age (+/- 5 years), sex and ethnicity matches from the outpatient medicine Clinic at Sinai hospital, as well as the Sinai community care clinic.

Exclusion Criteria:

Thrombocytopenia, defined as a platelet count of <100,000 at the time of recruitment of in the last available laboratory data

History of known bleeding disorder or known platelet dysfunction

Patients on antiplatelet treatment or anticoagulant therapies at the time of enrollment or 10 days prior to testing

CKD stage IV or greater