Scholars@Duke
Karenia Landa

Karenia Landa

Medical Instructor in the Department of Surgery
Surgery, Minimally Invasive Surgery

Selected Publications

Functional reprogramming of peripheral blood monocytes by soluble mediators in patients with pancreatic cancer and intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms.

Journal Article Front Immunol · 2023 BACKGROUND: Monocytes and monocyte-derived tumor infiltrating cells have been implicated in the immunosuppression and immune evasion associated with pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Yet, precisely how monocytes in the periphery and tumor microenvironment ... Full text Link to item Cite

Multidimensional Immunophenotyping of Intraductal Papillary Mucinous Neoplasms Reveals Novel T Cell and Macrophage Signature.

Conference Ann Surg Oncol · November 2022 BACKGROUND: Intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMN) are the only radiographically identifiable precursor to pancreatic adenocarcinoma, yet little is known about how these lesions progress to cancer. Inflammation has been associated with dysplastic ... Full text Link to item Cite

An Internally Validated Prognostic Risk-Score Model for Disease-Specific Survival in Clinical Stage I and II Merkel Cell Carcinoma.

Journal Article Ann Surg Oncol · October 2022 BACKGROUND: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare cutaneous malignancy for which factors predictive of disease-specific survival (DSS) are poorly defined. METHODS: Patients from six centers (2005-2020) with clinical stage I-II MCC who underwent sentinel ly ... Full text Link to item Cite

Multimodality analysis confers a prognostic benefit of a T-cell infiltrated tumor microenvironment and peripheral immune status in patients with melanoma.

Journal Article J Immunother Cancer · September 2022 BACKGROUND: We previously reported results from a phase 1 study testing intratumoral recombinant poliovirus, lerapolturev, in 12 melanoma patients. All 12 patients received anti-PD-1 systemic therapy before lerapolturev, and 11 of these 12 patients also re ... Full text Link to item Cite

Surgical resection is associated with improved long-term survival of patients with resectable pancreatic head cancer compared to multiagent chemotherapy.

Journal Article HPB (Oxford) · July 2022 BACKGROUND: Standard of care for resectable pancreatic cancer is a combination of surgical resection (SR) and multiagent chemotherapy (MCT). We aim to determine whether SR or MCT is associated with superior survival for patients receiving only single-modal ... Full text Link to item Cite

Breast cancer-derived DAMPs enhance cell invasion and metastasis, while nucleic acid scavengers mitigate these effects.

Journal Article Mol Ther Nucleic Acids · December 3, 2021 Breast cancer (BC) is the most common malignancy in women. Particular subtypes with aggressive behavior are major contributors to poor outcomes. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is difficult to treat, pro-inflammatory, and highly metastatic. We demonst ... Full text Link to item Cite

Predictors of False Negative Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy in Clinically Localized Merkel Cell Carcinoma.

Journal Article Ann Surg Oncol · November 2021 BACKGROUND: Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) is routinely recommended for clinically localized Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC); however, predictors of false negative (FN) SLNB are undefined. METHODS: Patients from six centers undergoing wide excision and SLNB ... Full text Link to item Cite

Controlling cancer-induced inflammation with a nucleic acid scavenger prevents lung metastasis in murine models of breast cancer.

Journal Article Mol Ther · May 5, 2021 Tumor cells release nucleic acid-containing proinflammatory complexes, termed nucleic acid-containing damage-associated molecular patterns (NA DAMPs), passively upon death and actively during stress. NA DAMPs activate pattern recognition receptors on cells ... Full text Link to item Cite

Phase I trial of intratumoral PVSRIPO in patients with unresectable, treatment-refractory melanoma.

Journal Article J Immunother Cancer · April 2021 BACKGROUND: While programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) antagonists have improved the prognosis for many patients with melanoma, around 60% fail therapy. PVSRIPO is a non-neurovirulent rhinovirus:poliovirus chimera th ... Full text Link to item Cite

Injectable Therapies for Regional Melanoma.

Journal Article Surg Oncol Clin N Am · July 2020 Patients with unresectable cutaneous, subcutaneous, or nodal melanoma metastases are often candidates for injectable therapies, which are attractive for ease of intralesional delivery to superficial metastases and limited systemic toxicity profiles. Inject ... Full text Link to item Cite

Abstract P3-01-03: Modulating inflammation with nucleic acid scavengers to prevent breast cancer metastasis

Conference Cancer Research · February 15, 2020 AbstractRationale: Chronic inflammation is a hallmark of cancer. Inflammation, whether it is an underlying baseline condition or induced/exacerbated due to treatment, is a major hurdle that ultimately impact ... Full text Cite

Oncolytic poliovirus immunotherapy for breast cancer

Conference JOURNAL OF IMMUNOLOGY · 2020 Cite

Prognostic significance of primary tumor sidedness in patients undergoing liver resection for metastatic colorectal cancer.

Journal Article HPB (Oxford) · December 2019 BACKGROUND: Approximately 38% of patients with colorectal cancer will develop isolated liver metastases. Sidedness of colon tumor is identified in non-metastatic and unresected metastatic cancers as predictive of survival, yet its dedicated analysis in res ... Full text Link to item Cite

Underutilization of surgical resection in patients with pancreatic acinar cell carcinoma.

Journal Article HPB (Oxford) · June 2019 BACKGROUND: Pancreatic acinar cell carcinoma (pACC) is a rare malignancy and surgical utilization has been historically low in these patients. Contemporary outcomes for this patient population remain unknown. METHODS: The 1998-2012 National Cancer Data Bas ... Full text Link to item Cite

Understanding the peripheral cellular immunome in patients with breast cancer.

Conference Journal of Clinical Oncology · March 10, 2019 7 Background: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) for breast cancer (BC) is being increasingly used in patients with stage I/II disease. Although previously reserved for patients with locally advanced disease, its use in patients with ... Full text Cite

Examining Peripheral and Tumor Cellular Immunome in Patients With Cancer.

Journal Article Front Immunol · 2019 Immunotherapies are rapidly being integrated into standard of care (SOC) therapy in conjunction with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy for many cancers and a large number of clinical studies continue to explore immunotherapy alone and as part of comb ... Full text Link to item Cite

Abstract LB-302: Oncolytic poliovirus-mediated inflammation and immunity in breast cancer

Conference Cancer Research · July 1, 2018 AbstractBreast cancer is the most common malignancy among women in the United States and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women. Disease prognosis, local recurrence rates and response to therapy ... Full text Cite