Brown study sheds light on cancer colonizing cells

PROVIDENCE – Using a micro-engineered device that acts as an obstacle course for cells, Brown University researchers have shed new light on a cellular metamorphosis thought to play a role in tumor cell invasion throughout the body.
The epithelial mesenchymal transition is a process in which epithelial cells, which tend to stick together within a tissue, change into mesenchymal cells, which can disperse and migrate individually.
EMT is a beneficial process in developing embryos, allowing cells to travel throughout the embryo and establish specialized tissues. But recently it has been suggested that EMT might also play a role in cancer metastasis, allowing cancer cells to escape from tumor masses and colonize distant organs.
For this study, published in the journal Nature Materials, lead author Ian Wong, assistant professor in the Brown School of Engineering and the Center for Biomedical Engineering, and fellow researchers were able to image cancer cells that had undergone EMT as they migrated across a device that mimics the tissue surrounding a tumor.
“People are really interested in how EMT works and how it might be associated with tumor spread, but nobody has been able to see how it happens,” said Wong. “We’ve been able to image these cells in a biomimetic system and carefully measure how they move.”
Armed with an understanding of how EMT cancer cells migrate, the researchers hope they can use this same device for preliminary testing of drugs aimed at inhibiting that migration. •

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