MedTech firms BD Medical Products and Terumo Asia Holdings have come on board to strengthen Duke-NUS Medical School’s unique innovation programme to address critical unmet healthcare needs.

Our body’s “blood factory” consists of specialized tissue made up of bone cells, blood vessels, nerves and other cell types. Now, researchers have succeeded for the first time in recreating this cellular complexity in the laboratory using only human cells. The novel system could reduce the need for animal experiments for many applications.

When aggressive cancer cells spread through the body, they cause metastasis, which significantly reduces a person’s chance of survival. For this spreading to take place, they can switch between different cell states that move with different strategies. In Biomicrofluidics, by AIP Publishing, a team of researchers from the Delft University of Technology and the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience explored the mechanics at play that enable two types of metastatic cancer cells to achieve the same result of movement, with only one doing so via tissue manipulation. The research is among the first to reveal a direct link between cancer cell deformability and active migration through small gaps.