Tumor cells go against the flow
Cancer's uncontrolled spread throughout the body is what makes the disease so deadly. To shed some light on the spreading process, mechanical engineers at MIT have developed a microfluidic model to better understand how cancer cells break loose from their original tumor, make their way into the body's vascular system and travel around the body. Using that microfluidic device, Professor Roger Kamm and mechanical engineering graduate student William Polacheck, in collaboration with Joseph Charest from the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, have discovered that the direction in which fluid flows through bodily tissue determines how likely cancer cells are to spread, or metastasize. Armed with that information, they say, it may be possible to limit the spread of cancer. Almost as important as their discovery — described in a recent issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — is the 3-D microfluidic system they invented that...