Achievement

While the cancer stem cell (CSC) model is being tested and refined, many important biological questions remain unanswered, due in part to the challenges of identifying, recovering, and studying unperturbed viable primary tumor cells such as CSCs. Appropriate technology permitting the prospective characterization of discrete tumor cell types and recovery of selected viable cells from a tumor have yet to be developed. Trisha Westerhof, an IGERT LifeChips fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, and her LifeChips faculty advisors have brought together the fields of biology, medicine, physical sciences, and engineering to develop a new micro and nanotechnology. Through the collaboration between a tumor biology lab (Dr. E.L. Nelson) and a biomedical engineering lab (Drs. Mark Bachman and G.-P. Li), the micropallet array (MPA) has been developed to effectively isolate, identify, recover, and then analyze individual adherent cells comprising a tumor.