Event

Bioengineering Seminar Series: Arvind Pathak

Friday, October 17, 2014
9:00 a.m.
Pepco Room (1105), Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building
Associate Professor Yu Chen
yuchen@umd.edu

Arvind Pathak
Assistant Professor
Division of Cancer Imaging Research
Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Multiscale Imaging and Modeling of Angiogenesis in Cancer

Angiogenesis or new blood vessel formation is one of the ‘hallmarks’ of cancer and necessary for tumor progression and metastasis. However, tumor blood vessels are structurally and functionally abnormal compared to vessels in healthy tissue. These abnormalities profoundly affect tumor hemodynamics, metastatic potential, and drug delivery. A recent explosion in imaging technologies has revolutionized our understanding of the role of the tumor vasculature and these phenomena. This lecture will highlight new 3D imaging techniques for visualizing the tumor vasculature; strategies for imaging the vascular phenotype at different spatial scales; and describe how 3D imaging data that quantify tissue morphology and molecular factors can be used in computational models of cancer and image contrast. The integration of preclinical cancer imaging data lays the ground work for systems biologists to map the ‘vasculome’ of a wide array of diseases. Mapping the tumor vasculature using multiscale imaging and modeling also enhances our understanding of the tumor microenvironment.  Collectively, these advances enable us to relate the genotype to the vascular phenotype, identify novel drug targets and develop reliable clinical biomarkers of cancer.