NEW SYNTHETIC
TUMOR ENVIRONMENTS
MAKE CANCER RESEARCH
MORE REALISTIC
Materials Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Kris Kilian and Illinois
colleagues have developed a new technique to create a cell habitat of squishy
fluids, called hydrogels, which can realistically and quickly recreate microenvironments found across biology. To illustrate the potential of their technique,
the Illinois team mixed breast cancer cells and cells called macrophages that
signal cancer cells to spread and grow into a tumor. They were able to observe
how differently cells act in the three-dimensional, gel-like environment, which is
much more like body tissues than current options—a flat, hard plastic plate or
expensive mouse avatars that are created by injecting human tumor cells into
mice. “This is really the first time that it’s been demonstrated that you can use
a rapid methodology like this to spatially define cancer cells and macrophages,”
said Kilian, noting the importance of the architecture to answering fundamental
biological questions.
What sets the team’s model apart from mouse avatars and hard plastic plates is
that it can replicate much more accurately the sizes and shapes of the microenvironment within the patient’s problem area. The materials that pharmaceutical
companies use to test drugs’ effects on cells don’t allow for three-dimensional
vascularization, a network of capillaries that carry drugs and other materials
throughout the body. The team’s model does, creating networks that go from
straight, to snakelike, to any shape.
MNTL HIGHLIGHTS REPORT
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