Metastasis, or the spread of cancer from one place in the body to another, can take place through tissue, lymph nodes and blood vessels. Working with doctoral student Andrew Wong, Searson wanted to see metastasis through blood vessels.
To create the most realistic representation of blood vessels inside the body, Wong engineered an artificial microvessel platform. The platform is a palm-size dish containing a lifelike blood vessel with nutrient-rich fluid running through it and reconstituted tissue around it.
“Nobody has simulated metastatic events before in a device as physiologically accurate as ours,” says Wong.
Previous platforms used a single two-dimensional layer of the cells that line blood vessels; others used rectangular channels—nothing like Wong’s completely cylindrical vessels with fluid running through them.
After introducing cancer cells near the blood vessel in the device, Wong started filming what was happening through a microscope. “It was like having a window into the body of someone with cancer,” says Searson.
Over the course of a few days, Wong and Searson observed how a cancer cell forced its way into the blood vessel and got carried away in the fluid. After that, they saw numerous cancer cells follow the path of the first.
“There can be thousands of circulating tumor cells in a person’s body, which suggests there’s a bulk entry mechanism into blood vessels,” says Wong. “Our device captured this phenomenon.”
The researchers aim to use the new device to advance knowledge of cancer metastasis and help test new drugs to prevent it. “We hope to understand how chemotherapeutics can penetrate through our vessels and into tumor cells, and how to best deliver those drugs,” says Wong.