Studying Cells in 3D Could Reveal New Cancer Targets.

(From AScribe)

BALTIMORE -- Showing movies in 3-D has produced a box-office bonanza in recent months. Could viewing cell behavior in three dimensions lead to important advances in cancer research? A new study led by Johns Hopkins University engineers indicates it may happen. Looking at cells in 3-D, the team members concluded, yields more accurate information that could help develop drugs to prevent cancer's spread.

The study, a collaboration with researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, appears in the June issue of Nature Cell Biology.

"Finding out how cells move and stick to surfaces is critical to our understanding of cancer and other diseases. But most of what we know about these behaviors has been learned in the 2-D environment of Petri dishes," said Denis Wirtz, director of the Johns Hopkins Engineering in Oncology Center and principal investigator of the study. "Our study demonstrates for the first time that the way cells move inside a three-dimensional environment, such as the human body, is fundamentally different from …