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Engineering a tissue-mimicking platform to assess cancer metastasis therapy in vivo

Visiting Scholar Fellowships
Project Investigator(s): 
Amato J. Giaccia - Jack, Lulu and Sam Willson Professor and Professor of Radiation Oncology and (by courtesy) of Obstetrics and Gynecology and of Surgery
Sarah Heilshorn - Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and (by courtesy) of Chemical Engineering and of Bioengineering
Awarded in 2015

NOVO NORDISK FOUNDATION-SPONSORED VISITING SCHOLAR FELLOWSHIP RESEARCH PROJECT - 2015

Visiting Scholar: Ninna Rossen (BRIC-University of Copenhagen)

Stanford Faculty Advisor: Amato Giaccia (Radiation Oncology) and Sarah Heilshorn (Materials Science & Engineering)
 

Ninety percent of cancer deaths are caused by metastasis, the process through which cancer spreads within the body. Ninna is engineering vascular networks in in vitro models of the different tissues in which metastases most frequently occur. Her goal is to develop an assay that can determine to which tissues an individual patient's cancer is most likely to metastasize. This assay will provide cancer researchers a tool for studying metastasis on a single cell level and could permit clinicians to predict the metastatic course a cancer will take in each individual patient and to identify the treatment to which that cancer will be most susceptible.