Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

The Engineering Of A Microscale Niche To Test A Novel Anti-Cancer Agent, Dominic M. Halsmer, William Ranahan, Alexander C. Mills

Christian Engineering Conference

Cutting-edge biomedical research often relies on innovative tools from the field of engineering. Some of these tools are designed to investigate or probe a niche, analyzing its characteristics and affordances. Other devices are engineered to create a niche in which a specific, unique interaction can take place, while the outcomes are carefully monitored. This paper will focus of the latter and, more specifically, the production of a niche for inducing promising interaction between cancer cells and certain types of fungi. Preliminary research suggests that when maintained in close proximity to breast cancer cells, mushroom mycelia secrete compounds which trigger the …