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Isabel Pires, lecturer in Cancer Biology at the University of Manchester, was recently awarded the Don Whitley Scientific (DWS) Travel Grant. Isabel used the award to attend the British Association for Cancer Research (BACR) ‘New Developments in Breast Cancer - From Lab to Clinic’ meeting, which was held in the Glasshouse International Centre for Music between 25 – 27 November 2024. Here, she presented her research, ‘Identification of breast cancer biomarkers linked with interstitial fluid flow and hypoxia using a spheroid-on-chip perfusion system’.
We asked Isabel to share more about her work and her experience at the BACR:
“My research group is primarily interested in the biology of hypoxia, both in the context of improved responses to therapy, as well as identifying new markers of aggressive disease associated with hypoxia. More recently, we have been investigating how other physical components of a tumour, such as the flow of fluids between cancer cells (interstitial fluid flow, or IFF), can drive tumour biology and interact with tumour hypoxia. The work that I presented at the meeting focused on the latter part of our research and represented recently published findings.
In this study, we used a spheroid-on-chip microfluidics (lab-on-chip) model in both normal atmospheric (normoxia) or hypoxic conditions to compare IFF-like flow with static conditions. To create hypoxic conditions, we placed our system inside a Whitley H35 HEPA Hypoxystation (see photo), allowing us to maintain consistent tumour relevant oxygen and temperature levels.
We found that the biological changes driven by IFF-like flow are dramatic at gene expression level, and that these are different in normoxic vs hypoxic conditions. Importantly for this meeting, we use breast cancer spheroids in our model and demonstrated that it can be used to identify potential markers of breast cancer progression and outcome.
I would like to thank DWS for providing me with this award. The DWS Travel Grant enabled me to attend the BACR meeting, present my work to the breast cancer research community, and support my team (PhD student and Postdoc), who also attended.”
We congratulate Isabel and her success in presenting her research at the BACR. If you are interested in applying for one of our travel grants, please find more details on the DWS Travel Grant page. For more information on our Hypoxystation range please see the products below or email us at sales@dwscientific.co.uk
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