While the pancreas is of particular interest to me, its presence in the title is the worst sort of clickbait: it buried the lede.
The real invention is a batch-reproducible gel in which all sorts of tissue can be grown. That’s really exciting!
The real invention is a batch-reproducible gel in which all sorts of tissue can be grown. That’s really exciting!
My lab uses an engineering approach to develop new minimally invasive cancer therapies, and some of the new therapies are already being translated into early phase human trials: http://www.edboas.com/lab/
We're hiring biomedical engineers, so please contact me if you're interested.
One important question is why so many new cancer treatments are successful in mice and rats, but then fail in human trials. You could point to genetic differences between mice and humans, but I think another important factor is simply the size difference. Just like a scale model of an airplane won't fly the same way, there are also scaling laws in animals. Large animals have a lower metabolic rate (per kg), require lower drug dosing (mg/kg), have more defense mechanisms against cancer, and have differences in blood flow and many other variables. We suspect that cancer treatments that work in pigs will be more likely to also work in humans.
Cancer killed my grandfather, my best friend, my aunt, and so many other people I know, and what you are working on isn't just making money, it's saving lives.
first thanks for your work, since you're in advanced medical territories, what other labs / people / work do you follow with interest ?