nd-aces
Breast and prostate cancers account for over 25 percent of all new cancer cases in the United States. In 2024, the United States expects over 600,000 new cases of breast (313,500) and prostate (299,010) cancers to be diagnosed. Worldwide, one in eight women will diagnosed with breast cancer and one in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetimes. Cancer survival rates (at five years) for breast and prostate cancer are >85 percent if the cancer is diagnosed in the early stages when it is still localized to the original site or region. For breast and prostate cancer, five-year survival rates drop to less than 40 percent once the cancer has spread to distant sites.
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​One of the challenges in treating metastatic cancer is understanding the mechanisms that govern it. Research to date has determined that these mechanisms are highly complex, dynamic, and vary between individuals. Researchers are working to answer questions about how and why tumor cells migrate from the initial tumor site to what causes the latent period between when cancer cells migrate from the original tumor to when a metastatic tumor is detected.​
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Researchers typically grow cancer cells in flat dishes to study them. However, recently, they have begun to grow them in three dimensional (3-D) settings. 3-D cell culture is better than 2-D because it more closely mimics the natural environment of cells in the body, leading to more accurate biological responses and better research results. Creating the best surfaces for cells to grow in 3-D is challenging because they need to support cell growth, mimic tissue properties, and allow for nutrient and waste exchange, all while being biocompatible and easy to produce.
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​North Dakota's NSF EPSCoR Research Infrastructure and Improvement Track-1 effort [New Discoveries in the Advanced Interface of Computation, Engineering, and Science (ND-ACES)] is addressing this challenge by using an integrated approach bringing together experts in the fields of cellular biology, materials science, and computational research to understand and define the complex mechanisms that govern interactions between individual cells and their environment. Three-dimensional hard and soft scaffolds are being developed to grow tumor cells that mimic the environment cells would encounter in the body at the site of the primary tumor (soft tissues and scaffolds) and metastatic sites (bone or hard scaffolds), helping us to make new discoveries in cancer progression and metastasis.
acknowledgement
The ND-ACES NSF Track-1 cooperative agreement is a federal-state partnership to manage a comprehensive research development plan. ND EPSCoR manages the Track-1 award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Current funding is provided by the State of North Dakota and NSF EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program Track-1 (RII Track-1) Cooperative Agreement Award OIA #1946202. The ND-ACES Principal Investigator (PI) and Project Director (PD) is Colleen Fitzgerald, Ph.D., NDSU. The Co-PI is Scott Snyder, Ph.D.; UND.