# Engineered Invasive Human Breast Tumors with Integrated Capillaries and Lymphatics

> **NIH NIH U01** · BOSTON UNIVERSITY (CHARLES RIVER CAMPUS) · 2020 · $748,985

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
 Current in vivo and in vitro models of human cancer remain limited in their ability to replicate
progression to invasive disease in an easily accessible and physiologically relevant format. Tissue-engineered
tumors may provide a more powerful system by enabling modular control over key aspects of a tumor and its
microenvironment, such as vascular density or interstitial pressure. This collaborative study seeks to develop
and apply new methods of engineering vascularized tumors in vitro, in which the cellular, physical, and genetic
composition of the tumor and its microenvironment can be controlled with high spatial and temporal resolution.
The collaborative team consists of experts in biomaterials and tissue engineering (Tien), quantitative
developmental and tumor biology (Nelson), mechanics (Ekinci), and clinical tumor biology (Radisky) and
pathology (Nassar).
 The core enabling technology, which we have been developing over the past fifteen years, is the use of
three-dimensional (3D) micropatterned extracellular matrix hydrogels as scaffolds for directing the 3D
organization of engineered tissues. Specifically, the proposed work will create microscale human breast
tumors that contain perfused capillaries and draining lymphatics, which provide routes for tumor cell escape
and enable the capture of those cells for downstream expression profiling. Interstitial stresses and biochemical
composition will be analyzed by non-invasive imaging and repeated sampling of interstitial fluid, respectively, to
provide longitudinal data for correlation with tumor cell behavior. This work will also create vascularized
collagenous stroma that can accept human breast tumor biopsies as in vitro "patient-derived xenografts", for
the discovery of candidate mutations that favor tumor invasion and escape; these mutations will then be tested
in hypothesis-driven analyses using the engineered breast tumors. More broadly, this work will disseminate
these microscale tissue engineering technologies to cancer research laboratories for adaptation to other types
of cancers and tumor cell behaviors.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9888360
- **Project number:** 5U01CA214292-04
- **Recipient organization:** BOSTON UNIVERSITY (CHARLES RIVER CAMPUS)
- **Principal Investigator:** Celeste M Nelson
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $748,985
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-04-01 → 2022-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9888360

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9888360, Engineered Invasive Human Breast Tumors with Integrated Capillaries and Lymphatics (5U01CA214292-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-29 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9888360. Licensed CC0.

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