Monday, April 20, 2020 / 11:30 AM (EDT)
The Effect of Physicochemical Properties of Extracellular Matrix on Breast Cancer Development
Deep Parikh
Candidate for Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Biomedical Engineering
"Despite the notable progress in cancer therapy, breast cancer remains a significant clinical challenge, resulting in over 40,000 deaths in the United States and about 0.5 million worldwide per year. Metastasis, i.e., the process of invading distant tissues/organs (such as bone, liver, lung and brain) to develop secondary tumors, is considered the main cause of the high mortality. In recognition of the essential roles of tumor microenvironments, primarily composed of extracellular matrix (ECM) and tumor stromal cells, in tumor progression, efforts have been made to correlate the compositional alterations of ECM with tumor development. However, it remains to better understand how the physical changes of ECM such as stiffness variation would affect the aggressiveness of tumor cells. Furthermore, emerging attention has shifted to the regulatory functions of stromal cells (e.g., macrophages, fibroblasts) in tumorigenesis, but it would be crucial to study them in a pathophysiologically relevant setting. In this regard, the current doctoral dissertation research is aimed to address the above-mentioned questions while obtaining new insights using biomimetic engineering models." Continue reading...
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