(398b) Engineering the Tumor Cell Niche to Study Dormancy in Metastatic Breast Cancer

In recent years, engineered environments have been increasingly employed in cancer research to recapitulate the complex in vivo tumor microenvironment with the ultimate goal of creating a system to better understand disease initiation and progression. In particular, biomaterial scaffolds have emerged as a key tool, enabling design of environments that mimic some features of native tissue and thus provide a controllable but more physiologically relevant environment in vitro. In this talk, I will present our recent efforts in engineering biomimetic environments in vitro using biomaterial scaffolds to study dormancy in brain metastatic breast cancer. Such systems could enable identification of approaches aimed at re-educating the microenvironment with strong potential to halt cancer progression and improve patient survival outcomes.