AI Insight
Researcher Gevick Safarians is using microfluidic chip technology to simulate and study the different biological environments that metastatic prostate cancer cells encounter as they travel through the body. This approach allows for controlled laboratory recreation of the conditions cancer cells experience during metastasis, which could provide insights into how prostate cancer spreads. The work was motivated by the researcher's clinical experiences with terminal cancer patients seeking extended survival time.
Why it matters
Understanding the environments metastatic cancer cells navigate could lead to new therapeutic strategies to prevent or slow cancer spread, which is the primary cause of cancer-related deaths. Microfluidic models offer a cost-effective and controlled platform for testing potential treatments that target the metastatic process specifically.
Understand the Science
Gevick Safarians remembers the conversations. Patients dealing with cancer and other diseases with very poor prognoses, hoping not for years but for months—a little more time to settle their affairs, to figure out who would care for their pets. Those encounters stayed with him.