{"id":2998,"date":"2014-12-22T17:14:14","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T22:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=2998"},"modified":"2014-12-30T14:51:26","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T19:51:26","slug":"modeling-metastasis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2014\/12\/modeling-metastasis\/","title":{"rendered":"Modeling Metastasis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Modeling<\/a>It\u2019s not the tumor, but cancer\u2019s spread to other organs that kills. Fully understanding metastasis holds the key to halting cancer, and blood vessels are the primary conduit for the disease\u2019s spread.<\/p>\n

Now researchers in the laboratory of the Whiting School\u2019s Peter Searson, the Joseph R. and Lynn C. Reynolds Professor in Materials Science and Engineering and director of the Institute for NanoBioTechnology, have engineered an artificial blood vessel that reveals, in real time, exactly what happens during a cancer cell’s complex journey.<\/p>\n

The transparent device they\u2019ve developed consists of a cylindrical channel lined with human endothelial cells\u2014the same type of cells found in our blood vessels. The channel is housed within a gel made of collagen, the body\u2019s structural protein that supports living tissues. Searson and his colleagues seeded a small clump of metastatic breast cancer cells in the gel near the vessel while a nutrient-rich fluid was pumped through the channel to simulate blood flow. By fluorescently tagging the breast cancer cells, the researchers were able to track the cells\u2019 paths over multiple days under a microscope.<\/p>\n

The researchers have engineered an artificial blood vessel that reveals, in real time, exactly what happens during a cancer cell’s complex journey.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Andrew Wong, Searson\u2019s doctoral student at the INBT, developed the device and captured startling images and videos of the process. The images show the initial steps in the metastatic process where cancer cells break free from the main tumor and burrow through the surrounding matrix toward a neighboring vessel and escape into the bloodstream\u2014potentially on their way to another organ.<\/p>\n

The lab-made device allows researchers to visualize how \u201ca single cancer cell degrades the matrix and creates a tunnel that allows it to travel to the vessel wall,\u201d says Wong. \u201cThe cell then balls up, and after a few days, exerts a force that disrupts the endothelial cells. It is then swept away by the flow.\u201d Results of their experiments\u00a0with this device were published in Cancer Research<\/em> in September.<\/p>\n

Wong said his next goal will be to use the artificial blood vessel to investigate different cancer treatment strategies, such as chemotherapeutic drugs, to find ways to improve the targeting of drug-resistant tumors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not the tumor, but cancer\u2019s spread to other organs that kills. Fully understanding metastasis holds the key to halting cancer, and blood vessels are the primary conduit for the disease\u2019s spread. Now researchers in the laboratory of the Whiting School\u2019s Peter Searson, the Joseph R. and Lynn C. Reynolds Professor in Materials Science and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-impact","issue-winter-2015"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nModeling Metastasis - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2014\/12\/modeling-metastasis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Modeling Metastasis - JHU Engineering Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s not the tumor, but cancer\u2019s spread to other organs that kills. 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