Konstantinos Konstantopoulos, Ph.D.
Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
The Johns Hopkins University


“Think Inside the Channel: Lessons from Cancer Cell Migration in Confinement”

Abstract:
During the process of cancer metastasis, tumor cells separate from a primary tumor, migrate across blood vessel walls into the circulation and disperse throughout the body to colonize distant organs. This seminar will present an interdisciplinary approach, integrating engineering fundamentals with molecular cell biology techniques to understand cancer cell locomotion in engineered microenvironments, which recapitulate the three-dimensional longitudinal channels encountered in vivo. This presentation will focus on how tumor cells sense, adapt and respond to different physical microenvironments. The seminar will also discuss how this knowledge has led to the development of a microchannel assay capable of distinguishing aggressive from non-aggressive cancer cells for diagnosis, prognosis and precision care of cancer patients.