Scholars@Duke
Allison Haberstroh Sandler Hall

Allison Haberstroh Sandler Hall

Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology
Pathology
allison.hall@duke.edu
Box 3020 Med Ctr, Durham, NC 27710
Rm 3095 Duke Hospital South, Durham, NC 27710

Selected Publications

A color-based tumor segmentation method for clinical ex vivo breast tissue assessment utilizing a multi-contrast brightfield imaging strategy.

Journal Article J Biophotonics · May 2024 We demonstrate an automated two-step tumor segmentation method leveraging color information from brightfield images of fresh core needle biopsies of breast tissue. Three different color spaces (HSV, CIELAB, YCbCr) were explored for the segmentation task. B ... Full text Link to item Cite

Microcalcification crystallography as a potential marker of DCIS recurrence.

Journal Article Sci Rep · June 8, 2023 Ductal carcinoma in-situ (DCIS) accounts for 20-25% of all new breast cancer diagnoses. DCIS has an uncertain risk of progression to invasive breast cancer and a lack of predictive biomarkers may result in relatively high levels (~ 75%) of overtreatment. T ... Full text Link to item Cite

Low Cost Gastroschisis Silo for Sub-Saharan Africa: Testing in a Porcine Model.

Journal Article World J Surg · February 2023 BACKGROUND: Gastroschisis mortality in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains high at 59-100%. Silo inaccessibility contributes to this disparity. Standard of care (SOC) silos cost $240, while median monthly incomes in SSA are < $200. Our multidisciplinary Ameri ... Full text Link to item Cite

Molecular classification and biomarkers of clinical outcome in breast ductal carcinoma in situ: Analysis of TBCRC 038 and RAHBT cohorts.

Journal Article Cancer Cell · December 12, 2022 Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is the most common precursor of invasive breast cancer (IBC), with variable propensity for progression. We perform multiscale, integrated molecular profiling of DCIS with clinical outcomes by analyzing 774 DCIS samples from ... Full text Link to item Cite

Symptomatic versus asymptomatic COVID-19: does it impact placental vasculopathy?

Journal Article J Matern Fetal Neonatal Med · December 2022 This study sought to assess the impact of COVID-19 on placental vasculature in the context of maternal symptomatology - comparing asymptomatic to symptomatic pregnant patients - and disease severity - comparing pregnant patients with mild, moderate, severe ... Full text Link to item Cite

Pathology Engagement in Global Health: Survey Data of Global Pathology Interest and Barriers.

Journal Article Arch Pathol Lab Med · November 1, 2022 CONTEXT.—: Although pathology is essential to almost every practice in medicine, laboratory medicine professionals do not routinely volunteer in global health practice. OBJECTIVE.—: To gather information about the experience and interest levels of the path ... Full text Link to item Cite

Spatial interplay of tissue hypoxia and T-cell regulation in ductal carcinoma in situ.

Journal Article NPJ Breast Cancer · September 15, 2022 Hypoxia promotes aggressive tumor phenotypes and mediates the recruitment of suppressive T cells in invasive breast carcinomas. We investigated the role of hypoxia in relation to T-cell regulation in ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). We designed a deep lear ... Full text Link to item Cite

Association of lipid profile biomarkers with breast cancer by molecular subtype: analysis of the MEND study.

Journal Article Sci Rep · June 23, 2022 There is conflicting evidence on the role of lipid biomarkers in breast cancer (BC), and no study to our knowledge has examined this association among African women. We estimated odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for the association o ... Full text Link to item Cite

Metabolic Syndrome and Risk of Breast Cancer by Molecular Subtype: Analysis of the MEND Study.

Journal Article Clin Breast Cancer · June 2022 BACKGROUND: Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is characterized by a cluster of biological irregularities. The purpose of this analysis was to examine the association of MetS with BC among Nigerian women, and for the first time evaluate this association by molecula ... Full text Link to item Cite

Ductal Carcinoma in Situ: State-of-the-Art Review.

Journal Article Radiology · February 2022 Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a nonobligate precursor of invasive cancer, and its detection, diagnosis, and management are controversial. DCIS incidence grew with the expansion of screening mammography programs in the 1980s and 1990s, and DCIS is view ... Full text Link to item Cite

Automated Dcis Identification From Multiplex Immunohistochemistry Using Generative Adversarial Networks

Conference Proceedings - International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging · January 1, 2022 Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) is a non-obligatory precursor of Invasive Breast Cancer. It is the most common mammographically detected breast cancer. Predicting DCIS progression to invasive ductal carcinoma is a major clinical challenge due to the lack o ... Full text Cite

DCIS AI-TIL: Ductal Carcinoma In Situ Tumour Infiltrating Lymphocyte Scoring Using Artificial Intelligence

Conference Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) · January 1, 2022 Tumour infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) influence the prognosis of Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). Currently, manual assessment of TIL by expert pathologists is considered a gold standard. However, there are issues with a shortage of expert pathologists and ... Full text Cite

Unmasking the immune microecology of ductal carcinoma in situ with deep learning

Conference npj Breast Cancer · December 1, 2021 Despite increasing evidence supporting the clinical relevance of tumour infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in invasive breast cancer, TIL spatial variability within ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) samples and its association with progression are not well unde ... Full text Cite

A new method to accurately identify single nucleotide variants using small FFPE breast samples.

Journal Article Brief Bioinform · November 5, 2021 Most tissue collections of neoplasms are composed of formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded (FFPE) excised tumor samples used for routine diagnostics. DNA sequencing is becoming increasingly important in cancer research and clinical management; however it is ... Full text Link to item Cite

Endometrial Adenocarcinomas With No Specific Molecular Profile: Morphologic Features and Molecular Alterations of "Copy-number Low" Tumors.

Journal Article Int J Gynecol Pathol · November 1, 2021 The study evaluated morphologic patterns, mutational profiles, and β-catenin immunohistochemistry (IHC) in copy-number low (CNL) endometrial adenocarcinomas (EAs). CNL EAs (n=19) with next-generation or whole genome sequencing results and available tissue ... Full text Link to item Cite

Association of body composition with odds of breast cancer by molecular subtype: analysis of the Mechanisms for Established and Novel Risk Factors for Breast Cancer in Nigerian Women (MEND) study.

Journal Article BMC Cancer · September 25, 2021 BACKGROUND: The association between obesity and breast cancer (BC) has been extensively studied among US, European and Asian study populations, with often conflicting evidence. However, despite the increasing prevalence of obesity and associated conditions ... Full text Link to item Cite

Cellphone enabled point-of-care assessment of breast tumor cytology and molecular HER2 expression from fine-needle aspirates.

Journal Article NPJ Breast Cancer · July 2, 2021 Management of breast cancer in limited-resource settings is hindered by a lack of low-cost, logistically sustainable approaches toward molecular and cellular diagnostic pathology services that are needed to guide therapy. To address these limitations, we h ... Full text Link to item Cite

Association of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and odds of breast cancer by molecular subtype: analysis of the MEND study.

Journal Article Oncotarget · June 22, 2021 Breast cancer (BC) in Nigeria is characterized by disproportionately aggressive molecular subtypes. C-reactive protein (CRP) is associated with risk and aggressiveness for several types of cancer. We examined the association of high-sensitivity CRP (hsCRP) ... Full text Link to item Cite

Unmasking the immune microecology of ductal carcinoma in situ with deep learning.

Journal Article NPJ Breast Cancer · March 1, 2021 Despite increasing evidence supporting the clinical relevance of tumour infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in invasive breast cancer, TIL spatial variability within ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) samples and its association with progression are not well unde ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Association of Life-Course Educational Attainment and Breast Cancer Grade in the MEND Study.

Journal Article Ann Glob Health · 2021 BACKGROUND: Nigeria reports the highest age-standardized mortality rate for breast cancer (BC) among African countries and disproportionately high rates of high-grade cancer. Histological grade is a strong predictor of mortality, and evidence suggests that ... Full text Link to item Cite

Minimal barriers to invasion during human colorectal tumor growth.

Journal Article Nat Commun · March 9, 2020 Intra-tumoral heterogeneity (ITH) could represent clonal evolution where subclones with greater fitness confer more malignant phenotypes and invasion constitutes an evolutionary bottleneck. Alternatively, ITH could represent branching evolution with invasi ... Full text Link to item Cite

Survey of Global Health Education and Training in Pathology Residency Programs in the United States.

Journal Article Am J Clin Pathol · February 8, 2020 OBJECTIVES: This study assessed the prevalence, general interest, and barriers to implementing global health curricula in pathology residency programs. METHODS: We conducted a survey of 166 US pathology residency programs. RESULTS: Thirty-two (195) of 166 ... Full text Link to item Cite

Derivation of a nuclear heterogeneity image index to grade DCIS.

Journal Article Comput Struct Biotechnol J · 2020 Abnormalities in cell nuclear morphology are a hallmark of cancer. Histological assessment of cell nuclear morphology is frequently used by pathologists to grade ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). Objective methods that allow standardization and reproducibil ... Full text Link to item Cite

The Lineage Determining Factor GRHL2 Collaborates with FOXA1 to Establish a Targetable Pathway in Endocrine Therapy-Resistant Breast Cancer.

Journal Article Cell Rep · October 22, 2019 Notwithstanding the positive clinical impact of endocrine therapies in estrogen receptor-alpha (ERα)-positive breast cancer, de novo and acquired resistance limits the therapeutic lifespan of existing drugs. Taking the position that resistance is nearly in ... Full text Link to item Cite

Metastatic breast cancers have reduced immune cell recruitment but harbor increased macrophages relative to their matched primary tumors.

Journal Article J Immunother Cancer · October 18, 2019 The interplay between the immune system and tumor progression is well recognized. However, current human breast cancer immunophenotyping studies are mostly focused on primary tumors with metastatic breast cancer lesions remaining largely understudied. To a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Data from: Breast cancer in Tanzanian, black American, and white American women: An assessment of prognostic and predictive features, including tumor infiltrating lymphocytes

Dataset · October 2, 2019 Breast cancer is a major cause of morbidity and mortality for women in Sub-Saharan Africa and for black American women. There is evidence that the pathologic characteristics of breast cancers in both African women and black American women may differ from t ... Full text Cite

Efficient transplacental IgG transfer in women infected with Zika virus during pregnancy.

Journal Article PLoS Negl Trop Dis · August 2019 Zika virus (ZIKV) is a newly-identified infectious cause of congenital disease. Transplacental transfer of maternal IgG to the fetus plays an important role in preventing many neonatal infections. However, antibody transfer may also have negative consequen ... Full text Link to item Cite

CaMKK2 in myeloid cells is a key regulator of the immune-suppressive microenvironment in breast cancer.

Journal Article Nature communications · June 2019 Tumor-associated myeloid cells regulate tumor growth and metastasis, and their accumulation is a negative prognostic factor for breast cancer. Here we find calcium/calmodulin-dependent kinase kinase (CaMKK2) to be highly expressed within intratumoral myelo ... Full text Cite

Exploiting heat shock protein expression to develop a non-invasive diagnostic tool for breast cancer.

Journal Article Sci Rep · March 5, 2019 Leveraging the unique surface expression of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) in breast cancer provides an exciting opportunity to develop rapid diagnostic tests at the point-of-care setting. Hsp90 has previously been shown to have elevated expression levels a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Breast cancer in Tanzanian, black American, and white American women: An assessment of prognostic and predictive features, including tumor infiltrating lymphocytes.

Journal Article PLoS One · 2019 INTRODUCTION: Breast cancer is a major cause of morbidity and mortality for women in Sub-Saharan Africa and for black American women. There is evidence that the pathologic characteristics of breast cancers in both African women and black American women may ... Full text Link to item Cite

Intra-tumor molecular heterogeneity in breast cancer: definitions of measures and association with distant recurrence-free survival.

Journal Article Breast Cancer Res Treat · November 2018 PURPOSE: The purpose of the study was to define quantitative measures of intra-tumor heterogeneity in breast cancer based on histopathology data gathered from multiple samples on individual patients and determine their association with distant recurrence-f ... Full text Link to item Cite

Metaplastic Breast Cancer Treatment and Outcomes in 2500 Patients: A Retrospective Analysis of a National Oncology Database.

Journal Article Ann Surg Oncol · August 2018 BACKGROUND: Metaplastic breast cancer (MBC) is characterized by chemoresistance and hematogenous spread. We sought to identify factors associated with improved MBC outcomes and increased likelihood of MBC diagnosis. METHODS: Women ≥ 18 years of age with st ... Full text Link to item Cite

Prospective Evaluation of Lymph Node Processing at Staging Surgery for High-grade Endometrial Cancer.

Journal Article Int J Gynecol Pathol · May 2018 To determine whether the processing of additional adipose tissue collected during lymph node (LN) dissection results in the identification of additional LNs during endometrial cancer (EC) staging and to determine if the division of LNs into nodal basin-spe ... Full text Link to item Cite

Optimizing fluorescently-tethered Hsp90 inhibitor dose for maximal specific uptake by breast tumors

Conference Progress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE · January 1, 2018 Despite improvements in surgical resection, 20-40% of patients undergoing breast conserving surgery require at least one additional re-excision. Leveraging the unique surface expression of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90), a chaperone protein involved in seve ... Full text Cite

Leveraging ectopic Hsp90 expression to assay the presence of tumor cells and aggressive tumor phenotypes in breast specimens.

Journal Article Sci Rep · December 13, 2017 Hsp90 has been studied extensively as a therapeutic target in breast cancer in pre-clinical and clinical trials, demonstrating a variety of roles in metastatic progression. The evidence to date suggests a compelling opportunity to leverage attributes of Hs ... Full text Link to item Cite

Maternal CD4+ T cells protect against severe congenital cytomegalovirus disease in a novel nonhuman primate model of placental cytomegalovirus transmission.

Journal Article Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · November 3, 2015 Elucidation of maternal immune correlates of protection against congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) is necessary to inform future vaccine design. Here, we present a novel rhesus macaque model of placental rhesus CMV (rhCMV) transmission and use it to dissect ... Full text Link to item Cite

Cystic fibrosis involving the cervix, mimicking a well-differentiated adenocarcinoma: a case report.

Journal Article Int J Gynecol Pathol · January 2014 We describe clinicopathologic and immunohistochemical features of an unusual case of cystic fibrosis manifesting in the cervix as a mass lesion, mimicking cervical adenocarcinoma. A 24-year-old nulligravida with cystic fibrosis developed heavy postcoital v ... Full text Link to item Cite

Genes with bimodal expression are robust diagnostic targets that define distinct subtypes of epithelial ovarian cancer with different overall survival.

Journal Article J Mol Diagn · 2012 In some cancer types, certain genes behave as molecular switches, with on and off expression states. These genes tend to define tumor subtypes associated with different treatments and different patient survival. We hypothesized that clinically relevant mol ... Full text Link to item Cite

Bimodally Expressed Genes in Ovarian Carcinoma.

Conference LABORATORY INVESTIGATION · February 1, 2011 Link to item Cite

Bimodally Expressed Genes in Ovarian Carcinoma.

Conference MODERN PATHOLOGY · February 1, 2011 Link to item Cite

Minocycline-induced black thyroid.

Journal Article Diagn Cytopathol · August 2010 Full text Link to item Cite

Colonic schwannoma visualized on FDG PET/CT.

Journal Article Clin Nucl Med · March 2010 Full text Link to item Cite

High potency silencing by single-stranded boranophosphate siRNA.

Journal Article Nucleic Acids Res · 2006 In RNA interference (RNAi), double-stranded short interfering RNA (ds-siRNA) inhibits expression from complementary mRNAs. Recently, it was demonstrated that short, single-stranded antisense RNA (ss-siRNA) can also induce RNAi. While ss-siRNA may offer sev ... Full text Link to item Cite

RNA interference using boranophosphate siRNAs: structure-activity relationships.

Journal Article Nucleic Acids Res · 2004 In RNA interference (RNAi), short double-stranded RNA (known as siRNA) inhibits expression from homologous genes. Clinical or pre-clinical use of siRNAs is likely to require stabilizing modifications because of the prevalence of intracellular and extracell ... Full text Link to item Cite

RNA interference of human papillomavirus type 18 E6 and E7 induces senescence in HeLa cells.

Journal Article J Virol · May 2003 The human papillomavirus oncoproteins E6 and E7 promote cell proliferation and contribute to carcinogenesis by interfering with the activities of cellular tumor suppressors. We used a small interfering RNA molecule targeting the E7 region of the bicistroni ... Full text Link to item Cite