Rice University bioengineers announced on Mar. 26 the development of a new research platform, called the Advanced Tumor Landscape Analysis System (ATLAS), designed to improve laboratory studies of metastasis, the process by which cancer spreads from a primary tumor to other parts of the body.
Metastasis remains difficult to study due to challenges in recreating the conditions that cancer cells face as they move through the bloodstream. The new ATLAS system aims to address this gap by enabling scientists to generate large quantities of three-dimensional cancer cell clusters that closely mimic those involved in metastasis.
The ATLAS platform was developed in the lab of Michael King, Rice's E.D. Butcher Professor of Bioengineering and Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Scholar. The system uses superhydrophobic surfaces—materials that strongly repel water—to encourage cells within droplets to stick together and form clusters. "Metastasis is still poorly understood because adequate laboratory techniques to recreate this complex process are lacking," said King, who also serves as special adviser to the provost on life science collaborations with the Texas Medical Center.
According to Alexandria Carter, a doctoral student in King's lab and first author on the study, "The way this is achieved, both in nature and in the laboratory, is to create a surface that is rough on a nanoscale level, and then to coat the nanoscale bumps with a nonwetting substance such as Teflon or wax." Carter said their team achieved this effect for the first time using 3D printing technology: "Here, we achieved this for the first time through 3D printing, which means the method is scalable and easily adoptable by other labs." Compared with earlier methods for generating cell clusters, ATLAS requires less time and cost due its use of treated microwell arrays produced via 3D printing.
Using ATLAS, researchers created prostate cancer cell clusters containing stromal cells known as cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs). Testing showed these support cells help cancer survive stressful conditions during circulation. "One of the most exciting elements of our paper is that it does not just report on a new experimental method for other researchers to use, but it also reports new fundamental biological results," Carter said. She added: "Perhaps in the future the next generation of prostate cancer drugs will target these CAF 'escorts' as a way to prevent metastasis."
Carter recently completed Rice's Innovation Fellows program at Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie) and plans to commercialize ATLAS through her startup company Bionostic. Kyle Judah, Lilie executive director, said "a pre-requisite for bringing research beyond the bench is to be deeply passionate about the problem space, and Carter is the perfect example of an exceptionally driven and committed engineer willing this idea into reality." King concluded: "ATLAS makes it easier to study one of the most dangerous aspects of cancer."
