Thinking outside the 2D Box

It is no secret that Johns Hopkins is ranked #1 on the list of universities that spend the most money on research (and if you don't believe me, check out this press release). While part of the research budget is going to the Applied Physics Laboratory, which supports thousands of full time researchers, staff, and maintenance members, a good chunk goes to the famous medical school as well. And let's not forget our fellow brilliant students, who are making huge leaps forward in the myriad fields studied at Johns Hopkins. 

One of these labs in particular is challenging the way scientists study cancer and the way it spreads throughout a body. The Wirtz Lab in the Physical Sciences-Oncology Center has been focusing on studying the spread of cancerous cells, but in three dimensions.

If this doesn't sound revolutionary, consider the fact that most labs study cancerous cells that are contained to a Petri dish, a two dimensional surface on which cancer cells have a known motility (movement). But in 2010 Stephanie Fraley, a then-doctoral student in the Wirtz Lab, thought outside convention and wondered what would happen if a cancer cell was introduced to a cylindrical arrangement of a gel based on collagen I, the most common type of connective tissue in the human body. The results were enough to knock Denis Wirtz, the lab's director, off his feet and onto the 3D path.

While cells in a 2D environment would move slowly, adhering firmly to stiff surfaces within the Petri dish, the 3D cells appeared to move as though propelled by springs, and actively sought out softer parts of the gel-collagen. For decades scientists wondered why cancer cells remained around stiff, mutated flesh in the lab, but actively metastasized within a human body. The discovery of the Wirtz lab resolves this paradox. 

This discovery also raises questions about the efficacy of pharmaceuticals in the fight against cancer, and how tumors can be studied in 3D at all. The former has implications for drugs and chemotherapy; what if there is a drug that would be successful in the human body, but because it was tested in 2D (where cancer cells behave in a drastically different manner), it failed? Should all drugs be retested? How can we use current technology to study tumors in 3D? We need to design a new lens for SEMs to reach this information. Who will design that, and is there funding for it?

Like all good research, this discovery simply raises more questions to pursue. Wirtz, who received his training in physics, not biology, is adamant that the discoveries of his labs will pave the way for new, groundbreaking studies. This would not have been possible if not for the hard work of all who participate in supporting his research, not only financially. Donald E. Ingber of Harvard and Kenneth Yamada, NIH investigator and second most cited researcher in biology according to Google Scholar, both think 3D cancer research is the "missing link" between the 2D lab and a live human or animal model. 

Armed with this research, Wirtz intends to finally beat cancer once and for all, and he is only one of hundreds of hard working researchers at Hopkins. Truly, we earned the status as #1. Let's go Blue Jays!