Events Calendar

USC Physical Sciences in Oncology Center

Speaker: Dr. Mingming Wu, Associate Professor, Biological and Environmental Engineering Department, Cornell University

Talk Title: Microfluidics for Cancer Cell Chemotaxis

Abstract: The emerging field of micro-technology has opened up new possibilities for exploring cellular chemotaxis in real time and space, and at single cell resolution. Cancer cell chemotaxis plays important roles in cancer metastasis, where cancer cells break away from the primary tumors, migrate through the interstitial space, and establish secondary tumors at foreign sites. It is known that cells of many cancer types metastasize to lymph nodes. Despite its clinical importance, the physical and molecular cues that cancer cells use to navigate and migrate around lymph nodes are far from understood. In this talk, I will present efforts from my lab (biofluidics.bee.cornell.edu) in studying cancer cell migrating in well defined chemokine gradients, slow fluid flows (i.e. engineered interstitial flow), and biomatrix stiffness. We use microfluidic 3D in vitro model to provide physiologically realistic, 3D, microenvironment for cells, advanced imaging systems to follow cancer dynamics within a lymphoidal like environment. Using a malignant breast cancer cell line (MDA-MB-231) as a model system, we found that cancer cell migration is tightly controlled by the chemokine gradients, the compliance of the 3D biomatrix, and the intersitial fluid flows.

Biography: Mingming Wu received her PhD in Physics from the Ohio State University in the United States in 1992, and was a postdoctoral researcher in Ecole Polytechnique, France in year 1992 and University of California at Santa Barbara in 1993- 1995. In year 1996, she joined the physics department at Occidental College in Los Angeles as an assistant/associate professor. Since 2003, she is an adjunct associate professor in the engineering college at Cornell University. Her current research interests are: Bio-inspired engineering, microfluidics and quantitative imaging. Her role in the PS-OC center is to use advanced imaging, as well as micro-fabrication techniques to explore dynamic processes in cancer metastatic cascades.

Host: Center for Applied Molecular Medicine

More Information: USC-PSOC_MonthlySeminar.pdf

Location: Clinical Science Center (CSC) - Harkness Auditorium

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Kristina Gerber