Claudia Fischbach-Teschl is the Director of Cornell's Physical Sciences Oncology Center on the Physics of Cancer Metabolism. She received her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Technology from the University of Regensburg, Germany and holds an M.S. in Pharmacy from the Ludwigs-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany. She conducted her postdoctoral work at Harvard University in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences and joined the faculty of Cornell in 2007. Dr. Fischbach-Teschl's lab applies biomedical engineering strategies to study cancer with the ultimate goal of identifying new mechanisms that may ultimately help to prevent and treat this disease. She serves on the NIH Tumor Microenvironment Study Section and is an editorial board member of various journals including the new ACS journal Biomaterials Science and Engineering.
Cellular interactions with their surrounding including other cells and extracellular matrix are critically important in the development and progression of cancer. However, current cancer research mostly studies cells under conditions that do not reflect how cells exist in the body. By exploring tissue engineering, microfabrication, and biomaterials strategies the Fischbach-Teschl lab engineers model systems that allow studying tumor cells under conditions that mimic those within patients. In particular, the Fischbach-Teschl lab uses these model systems to gain a better understanding of the biological and physical principles that tumors use to modulate the function of normal blood vessels, stem cells, and bone in order to become more aggressive and ultimately metastasize to distant sites.