Organotypic microfluidic system to interrogate tumor-endothelial cell crosstalk and identify drug targets to hinder metastatic disease

The lab leverages organotypic microfluidic systems in which tumor ductal structures are patterned adjacent to engineered vasculature. Combined with transcriptomic and secretomic analysis, the project aims to identify tumor-associated vasculature signatures that contribute to vascular invasion and metastatic disease, and to incorporate a panel of patient-derived tumor organoid lines within high-throughput microfluidics to screen drug targets that can disrupt tumor-vasculature signalling axes and vascular invasion.

"I am a postdoctoral research fellow in the Departments of Surgery and Cancer Biology at the University of Michigan under Dr. Timothy Frankel and Dr. Marina Pasca di Magliano, with a long-standing goal of studying cancer cell invasion and metastasis. My research combines approaches from materials science, tissue engineering and cell biology to engineer organotypic systems modelling the pancreatic tumor microenvironment. My current work incorporates patient-derived pancreatic tumor lines within vascularised microfluidic devices to investigate vasculature-tumor interactions, with the long-term goal of identifying soluble crosstalk axes and drug targets that may help hinder vascular invasion and metastatic disease."