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Oregon scientists are 3D printing their way to a healthier future for us all
opb.org
“It’s not just the genetic mutations within the cancer that caused it [to form]. It’s also how the cells are arranged. If one cell type is next to a different cell type, that can actually indicate if you’re going to have a better or worse prognosis,” Helms says.
Helms is using her printing technique to figure out how different configurations of cells behave.
“I will take a cancer cell and I’ll put healthy cells around and I will see: How do these cells communicate?” she explains. “Does the cancer keep growing? Do the healthy cells act more cancerous? And we keep changing the patterns and the cell types to find out: How are these cells talking to each other?”
And ultimately, it may reveal what makes one person’s cancer more aggressive than another’s — and that information is very valuable. Because once they understand the interactions between the cells, researchers have the information they need to develop new treatments.