To fully understand why breast cancer spreads, or metastasizes, you must also consider the how.
To fully understand why breast cancer spreads, or metastasizes, you must also consider the how.
That's what researchers in a biophysics and imaging laboratory in the School of Science at IUPUI did as they studied the mechanics of cell migration, which can possibly explain how cancer cells generate enough force to move from the primary tumor site through the body and then settle into bones, said Jing Liu, an assistant professor in the school's Department of Physics, a Purdue University program. Nearly 30 percent of breast cancer metastasizes to other organs, with bones being among the most frequent sites.
A paper with the researchers' findings was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports. Liu and Hiroki Yokota, a professor of biomedical engineering at IUPUI, are co-corresponding authors of the paper.
"From a physics point of view, all the cell migration is driven by force," Liu said. "We really want to discover the force architecture of a cell and deliver the biomechanical and biophysical explanations toward cellular activities. The major focus of our lab is developing imaging methods to physically interpret cancer biology."
Read more at Indiana University
