The mechanisms by which cancers metastasize and propagate throughout the body remain mostly a mystery. Primary tumors can be found and removed, but all too frequently the cancers randomly recur to fight another fight. To better understand how cancer cells break off and travel through the blood stream to colonize other parts of the body, researchers at Johns Hopkins University created a transparent artificial blood vessel in which cancer behavior can be studied close-up.
The vessel is coated with collagen and seeded with endothelial cells. Once the device is ready, a clump of breast tumor tissue tagged with fluorescent markers is placed just outside the collagen matrix. Using a microscope, the markers can be tracked as the cancer cells move through the artificial vessel wall to reach the blood flow within the lumen.
The Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology released a podcast about this research which you can listen to here…
Johns Hopkins: Artificial blood vessel visualizes cancer cell journey…
Study in journal Cancer Research: Live-Cell Imaging of Invasion and Intravasation in an Artificial Microvessel Platform…