Engineering center to probe forces that cause cancer to spread
Oct 26, 2009 - 3:59:36 AM
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Mechanical forces inside the body, such as shear exerted by blood flowing through blood vessels, typically destroy the millions of cancer cells that are constantly shed from tumors, Wirtz said. But the 'fittest' of cancer cells survive these Darwinian-like selective pressures and may become the culprits that spread cancer. Little is known about the effect of mechanical forces on the regulation of cancer cell growth. That is what the Engineering in Oncology Center and the National Cancer Institute want to find out. The results should point us to therapies and diagnostic tools that complement existing genetic or molecular treatments.
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By Johns Hopkins University,
[RxPG] Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology have been awarded $14.8 million from the National Cancer Institute to launch a research center aimed at unraveling the physical underpinnings of the growth and spread of cancer.
The new Johns Hopkins Engineering in Oncology Center at INBT includes 11 Johns Hopkins faculty members affiliated with the INBT and four from partner universities. The project's participants say that they hope this new line of research will lead to never-before-considered approaches to cancer therapy and diagnostics.
The Johns Hopkins center is one of 12 being launched by the National Cancer Institute to bring a new cadre of theoretical physicists, mathematicians, chemists and engineers to the study of cancer. During the five-year initiative, the NCI's Physical Sciences-Oncology Centers will take new, nontraditional approaches to cancer research by studying the physical laws and principles of cancer; evolution and evolutionary theory of cancer; information coding, decoding, transfer and translation in cancer; and ways to deconvolute cancer's complexity.
By bringing a fresh set of eyes to the study of cancer, these new centers have great potential to advance, and sometimes challenge, accepted theories about cancer and its supportive microenvironment, NCI Director John E. Niederhuber said.
The NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health, will allocate the Johns Hopkins-based Engineering in Oncology Center's funding over five years. As the name of the center suggests, the researchers will look at how physical sciences play a role in the way cancer spreads, commonly called metastasis.
Physical scientists think in terms of time, space, pressure, heat and evolution in ways that we hope will lead to new understandings of the multitude of forces that govern cancer, Niederhuber said, and with that understanding, we hope to develop new and innovative methods of arresting tumor growth and metastasis.
Denis Wirtz, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering, will direct the center, and Gregg L. Semenza, a leading researcher at the School of Medicine, will serve as associate director.
Metastasis is a highly coordinated, multistep process, Wirtz said. Cancer cells break free from a primary tumor, penetrate into the bloodstream, evade host defenses, stick to the interior walls of blood vessels and travel to other organs, where they set up new cancer cell colonies. During this cascade of events, tumor cells push on and are pushed by mechanical forces within their microenvironment. Cells translate those mechanical forces into biochemical signals that affect cell growth and function. If we can gain a better understanding of this process, we may find new and better ways to treat cancer.
Wirtz, who is principal investigator, also serves as associate director of the university's Institute for NanoBioTechnology, a cross-divisional institute launched in May 2006 with 185 Johns Hopkins faculty members who are using nanoscience to answer questions in medicine, the basic sciences and public health.
The new cancer center will similarly draw on Johns Hopkins researchers with diverse expertise to study the role of physical forces involved in the development and spread of cancer.
Mechanical forces inside the body, such as shear exerted by blood flowing through blood vessels, typically destroy the millions of cancer cells that are constantly shed from tumors, Wirtz said. But the 'fittest' of cancer cells survive these Darwinian-like selective pressures and may become the culprits that spread cancer. Little is known about the effect of mechanical forces on the regulation of cancer cell growth. That is what the Engineering in Oncology Center and the National Cancer Institute want to find out. The results should point us to therapies and diagnostic tools that complement existing genetic or molecular treatments.
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