Abstract
Cancer drug development is a long and expensive process. Although many molecular entities enter into development, the number of drugs that are successful in clinical trials is small. A factor contributing to this low success rate is the lack of preclinical models that accurately predict in vivo effectiveness of candidate therapeutics. The limited predictive ability of current pre-clinical models is believed to be largely a result of their inability to adequately mimic human cancer. To address this limitations, we have designed and developed an in vitro breast cancer surrogate that is characterized by 1) a three-dimensional architecture and a volume that approximates human breast cancers at the time of diagnosis, 2) a human cellular composition that includes cancer epithelial cells and stromal cells, specifically cancer associated fibroblasts and human microvascular mammary endothelial cells, 3) a relevant extracellular matrix, and 4) an engineered microvasculature that serves as a conduit for nutrient/drug perfusion via a novel bioreactor system. This combination of features and bioreactor design is unique among 3D in vitro models of cancer, and morphologic evaluation demonstrates the similarity of our surrogates to human breast cancers. Our perfused surrogate system is flexible in its cellular and ECM composition and can be used to address a wide array of questions in basic tumour biology. This talk will detail the current state of our tissue engineered system and the prospects for its use as a tool for development of chemotherapeutics.
Biography
Joel Berry, PhD was born in Atlanta, Georgia USA and received his Bachelor of Biology and Bachelor and Master’s in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Doctorate in Biomedical Engineering from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina where he studied cardiovascular fluid mechanics, medical imaging, and tissue engineering. He has been an associate professor of biomedical engineering at UAB since 2010. His early research focused on modelling the fluid and solid mechanical effects of metallic stents placed in arteries (collaboratively with Professor James E. Moore, Jr., of Imperial College) as well as the fluid mechanical effects of vascular cell development in engineered arteries. His current research centres on the development of a three-dimensional tissue engineered model system for breast cancer that could be used to culture individual cancer cells from patients and permit testing of a panel of chemotherapeutics for drug development. Dr. Berry is director of the undergraduate program in Biomedical Engineering at UAB and teaches undergraduate level bioinstrumentation and an undergraduate course pairing biomedical engineering students with physicians to innovate solutions to unsolved clinical problems.