Location
Cherry Auditorium, Kirk Hall
Start Date
10-25-2018 12:45 PM
Description
Angiogenesis is a requisite not only for tumors to grow beyond 1-2 mm3 and meet their insatiable metabolic demands but also to act as conduits for cancer cells to reach distant organs and form metastatic lesions. Limited clinical efficacy of angiogenesis inhibitors highlights the need to identify new therapies that can either act alone or synergistically to suppress tumor vascularization. Even though the extracellular matrices (ECM) of solid tumors are stiffer than the native tissue and mechanotransduction events are known to impact tumor progression by altering cell-matrix interactions, whether matrix stiffening impacts the angiogenic activity of cancer cells is not understood. In this talk, some perspectives will be offered on the potential existence of a mechano-regulatory circuit in controlling tumor vascularization, as evidence suggests that matrix stiffening alters the angiogenic activities of the cancer cells and therapeutically intervening cancer mechanobiology may benefit cancer treatment.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Ghosh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Michigan-Dearborn. She joined UMD in Fall 2011. Prior to that she completed her Ph.D in Chemical Engineering from University of Kentucky, Lexington and followed it up with her postdoctoral research at University of Wisconsin, Madison with Dr. Sean Palecek in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. The focus of her laboratory is development and characterization of polymer networks with desired structure, property, and functionality for a series of applications: (1) Engineering tumor microenvironment to study angiogenesis, (2) Regulating stem cell behavior with material cues, and (3) Cancer diagnosis and therapy monitoring.
Mechanical Regulation of Cancer Cell Angiogenic Activity
Cherry Auditorium, Kirk Hall
Angiogenesis is a requisite not only for tumors to grow beyond 1-2 mm3 and meet their insatiable metabolic demands but also to act as conduits for cancer cells to reach distant organs and form metastatic lesions. Limited clinical efficacy of angiogenesis inhibitors highlights the need to identify new therapies that can either act alone or synergistically to suppress tumor vascularization. Even though the extracellular matrices (ECM) of solid tumors are stiffer than the native tissue and mechanotransduction events are known to impact tumor progression by altering cell-matrix interactions, whether matrix stiffening impacts the angiogenic activity of cancer cells is not understood. In this talk, some perspectives will be offered on the potential existence of a mechano-regulatory circuit in controlling tumor vascularization, as evidence suggests that matrix stiffening alters the angiogenic activities of the cancer cells and therapeutically intervening cancer mechanobiology may benefit cancer treatment.
Comments
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