1 in 3 people will develop cancer in their lifetime, and over 90% of cancer patients die because their cancer has spread through the body - a process called metastasis. All organs and tumours are comprised of a mixture of cells held within a structural scaffold known as the extracellular matrix (ECM). We and others have shown that targeting the ECM scaffold can disrupt tumour growth and metastasis, and also enhance the killing potential of chemotherapy. We therefore believe that through understanding the precise composition and structure of the ECM, we will be able to know how to dismantle tumours.
We have developed a method to isolate ECM scaffolds from organs and tumours such that the 3 dimensional architecture is preserved. We can analyse these ECM scaffolds to know what components they are comprised of and to visualise their structure. The aim of the project is to analyse ECM scaffolds isolated from healthy and cancer-bearing organs to identify potential opportunities for therapeutic intervention to block cancer progression. The overall objectives are to characterise how the ECM scaffold is altered between healthy and cancer states, to test new therapeutic targeting strategies and to study the underlying biology to know how the ECM scaffold can control cell behaviour.
This project is important to society because it studies fundamental biology providing new information on how the body function and how cancer is regulated, and also by developing new therapeutic strategies to block cancer progression that could be translated into the clinic to decrease cancer patient suffering and increase cancer patient survival.
