Virginia Tech researchers have created an engineered model of the supportive tissue found within a lymph node to study human health. Working with scientists at the University of Virginia, the researchers are building a bioengineered model of a human lymph node, which performs essential roles in the immune system throughout the body. 

With support from a three-year, $1.85 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense (“Role of TBX2 in the establishment of the Prostate Cancer Pre-Metastatic Niche (PMN) in the Bone”), Srinivas Nandana, Ph.D., and Manisha Tripathi, Ph.D., from the Department of Cell Biology and Biochemistry at the TTUHSC School of Medicine seek to advance the understanding of prostate cancer metastasis by investigating the role of TBX2 in establishing the prostate cancer premetastatic niche in bone.

Hyperthermia, a cancer treatment using controlled heat to kill tumor cells, shows promise but faces limitations due to some tumor cells' unexpected heat resistance. Researchers from Japan have now discovered that high cholesterol levels in cancer cell membranes act as a protective barrier, shielding against heat-induced membrane breakdown. When cholesterol was depleted using drugs, previously heat-resistant tumors became vulnerable to hyperthermia treatment, opening new possibilities for personalized cancer therapy targeting cholesterol levels to improve outcomes.