Liver metastasis in a dish: why the liver so easily develops cancer metastases

Project summary

Liver metastasis is a lethal condition that affects multiple cancer types. We do not well understand what liver factors drive cancer cells to infiltrate and grow into metastases. To get better insights into this process, we will build a miniaturized model of the liver and investigate the interplay between the liver tissue and tumour cells when they enter the liver vasculature. This project will shed new light on how the liver environment can foster tumour cells to form a pre-metastatic niche, which is instrumental to develop targeted interventions against liver metastasis, possibly using the same human liver model.