Date
October 21, 2021 - 8:30amEvent Description
Presenter: Amanda Clark, PhD
Dr. Clark’s research has focused on investigating metastatic progression within the liver. She’s been particularly interested in discerning the cells and cues that regulate tumor dormancy and outgrowth within the metastatic microenvironment. To do this, Dr. Clark has been using a liver microphysiological system, also known as a ‘liver-on-a-chip’ to mimic a human liver ex vivo. More recently, she has moved towards using a more complex multi-organ version to investigate if distant inflammation in the gut drives metastatic recurrence in the liver. Dr. Clark will talk about a the liver-on-a-chip system and then how it’s being used to model metastatic progression, evaluate therapeutics, and improve our understanding of the bidirectional crosstalk that occurs between host tissue cells and the metastatic cancer cells.
Background Reading/Recent Manuscripts:
- Clark AM, Allbritton NL, Wells A. Integrative microphysiological tissue systems of cancer metastasis to the liver. Semin Cancer Biol. 2021 Jun;71:157-169. doi: 10.1016/j.semcancer.2020.06.010.
- Clark AM, Kumar MP, Wheeler SE, Young CL, Venkataramanan R, Stolz DB, Griffith LG, Lauffenburger DA, Wells A. A Model of Dormant-Emergent Metastatic Breast Cancer Progression Enabling Exploration of Biomarker Signatures. Mol Cell Proteomics. 2018 Apr;17(4):619-630. doi: 10.1074/mcp.RA117.000370.
- A. M. Clark, H. L. Heusey, L. G. Griffith, D. A. Lauffenburger, A. Wells. IP-10 (CXCL10) can trigger emergence of dormant breast cancer cells in a metastatic liver microenvironment. Front Oncol. 2021 May;11:676135.
Location and Address
MS Teams virtual meeting
Meeting logon info has been emailed to Department of Surgery staff. For Pitt and UPMC staff outside the department who wish to access the lecture, please email surgerywebmaster@upmc.edu.