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A Novel Biomaterial Enables Chemotactic Study Of Motile Central Nervous System-Derived Tumor Cells, Tanya Singh

Dissertations and Theses

"The local cell microenvironment plays an important role in maintaining the dynamics of the extracellular matrix (ECM) and the cell-ECM relationship. ECM is a complex network of macromolecules with distinct mechanical and biochemical characteristics [1]. The multifaceted interactions that occur between cells and the ECM are crucial to the regulation of processes that maintain homeostasis. These mechanisms are often deregulated during cancer onset and progression, which cause the ECM to become highly disorganized, alter the cell-matrix interactions, and promote increased hypervascularity and metastasis as these components are indicative of cancer progression. Medulloblastoma (MB) is one of the most common, malignant …