An optofluidic platform for longitudinal circulating tumor cell studies in mouse models of cancer

Metastasis is a complex, multi-step process that is responsible for over 90% of cancer-related deaths. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) that are shed from primary tumors represent the disseminating "seeds" that give rise to distant malignant growths. Despite their importance to metastasis, understanding of their role has been hindered by the extreme difficulty of characterizing CTC populations over time and linking them to metastases that occur during natural tumor progression. The use of in vivo mouse models of cancer for studying metastasis has been crucial for discovering effective new cancer biomarkers and therapies. This thesis outlines the development of a new platform that enables longitudinal and dynamic CTC studies in mouse models of cancer. The platform is designed to help better understand how changes in CTCs may reflect the evolution of their tumors of origin over time.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Hamza, Bashar,Ph. D.(Bashar M.)Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Scott Manalis.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128399

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/128399