Researchers develop 3-D tiny tissue models to study how ovarian cancer develops in women -
With a unique approach based on printing technologies 3-D, a team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers is developing new tools for understanding how ovarian cancer develops in women.
Approximately 1.5 percent of American women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer, but most of them will not be diagnosed until the end of the progression of the disease - after the spread of cancer to other body parts. This is reflected in the gloomy outlook for most women. The survival rate at five years for ovarian cancer is about 25 percent
Paul Campagnola, a professor of biomedical engineering and medical physics at UW-Madison, led a group of researchers to improve prospects that by understanding how cancer cells of the ovary interact with body tissues nearby, and developing new tools for imaging and detection of disease. With a grant of $ 2 million National Institutes of Health, they will use the technology they have developed on the UW-Madison campus to develop images of tissue from surgical patients. The first target is collagen, a common protein that gives a large part of the body maintaining the bone structure, ligaments and muscles together.
"In most cancers, including ovarian, there are wide variations in the structure of collagen which is associated with the disease," said Campagnola. "It may happen first. It could be later. It is actually not known."
Campagnola and his colleagues, including Kevin Eliceiri, director of the UW-Madison Laboratory for optical instrumentation and informatics, and Manish Patankar, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, the hope of eliminate the unknown by printing tiny models, 3-D collagen samples
models will biomimetic -. synthetic, but imitating biological materials, such as Velcro mimics a plant strawberries - and extremely small. Because after sowing, the models of ovarian cancer cells, researchers in the implanted mice.
Why not just injected mice with cancer cells and skip the detailed imaging and 3-D printing process? Mice do not get ovarian cancer -. A partial answer to why we still do not understand ovarian cancer and many other cancers
"The current way people study ovarian cancer in a mouse is very poor," Campagnola says. "They just take human cell lines, and injected into a mouse. Then some of them will form a tumor, but most do not."
By implementing a model of 3-D tissue inoculated with ovarian cancer in mice, Campagnola hopes to more closely mimic the conditions of metastatic ovarian cancer in humans.
"What's different is our tissues are already 3-D structured," said Campagnola. "A problem when people study the cancer is sometimes they put the cells in a dish. The cells in a dish do not behave like cells in tissues. So we try to give them the structure of the fabric cancer cells have in a native environment. "
there, they study how tumors develop implanted inside the mouse, and we hope to begin to learn about the clues and the processes involved in the progression and spread of the disease.
It is an approach that nobody has ever tried, one that will also help improve the way doctors make ovaries images inside body.
"There is an integrated approach to improve our imaging capabilities, but also the use of our imaging capabilities make these models so that we can study biology," says Campagnola .
Ultimately, the long-term goal of the team is to improve the detection, diagnosis and treatment of ovarian cancer. One of the most effective ways to improve the outlook for women with ovarian cancer is to develop a simple method for screening women at risk of the disease. Women with a mutation in a gene called BRCA - a mutation also involved in a higher risk of breast cancer - have a chance to develop ovarian cancer in their life 40 percent
" These are the women we really want. follow, "said Campagnola. "You can imagine - we are far from it. - Screening women for several years with a minimally invasive device through a laparoscope or through the fallopian tubes"
But to get to this point, Campagnola said, researchers need to know much more about the way the ovarian cancer.
"you must know what you want," he said. "That's why we've got more basic work to do to get to this point. That's why we need better imaging tools and we need better models for understanding the biology of the disease."
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