ME Seminar: Dr. Cynthia Hajal
Tissue Engineering Models for Cancer and Drug Delivery
Brain cancers are among the most fatal with a five-year survival rate of only 30%. This is due to their rapid growth rate, ability to develop resistance to chemotherapy, and the difficulties in transporting therapeutics across the blood-brain barrier (BBB), one of the tightest blood vessel barriers in humans. The lack of physiologically relevant in vitro human brain tumor models and the challenges in translating results from animal experiments to the clinic have greatly hindered progress in improving patient outcomes. We employ novel design strategies to engineer in vitro microfluidic brain cancer models and 3D tumor models from patient tissues to address this critical need. These platforms enable us to study tumor development in the brain, design new targeted nano-therapies for cancer, and understand the genetic mechanisms of resistance to chemotherapy. Our human-like tissue engineering models provide highly relevant pre-clinical tools that can be used to understand tumor progression and drug delivery, leading to better cancer patient outcomes.
Cynthia Hajal is a postdoctoral research fellow in the lab of Dr. Keith Ligon at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, with joint appointments at the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School. She is building 3D brain tumor models from patient tissues to study the genetic mechanisms of resistance to chemotherapy. Prior to this, Cynthia received her S.M. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, where she worked in the lab of Dr. Roger Kamm to develop microfluidic models of the brain blood vessels and other organ systems to study cancer progression and drug delivery. Cynthia earned her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and B.A. in Economics from Columbia University. During this time, she worked as a research assistant in the labs of Drs. James Hone and Michael Sheetz, where she designed nanoscale pillars for mechanosensing at the cellular scale. In her future lab, Cynthia will leverage her expertise in fluids, mechanics, and genetics to design complex microfluidic models of the tumor microenvironment to study cancer progression and drug delivery. These tissue engineering models will advance our understanding of cancer and drug delivery. They will be used to gain a more comprehensive insight into the impact of the tumor microenvironment on cancer.
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