What Are the Applications of Scaffold-Based Methods in Cancer?
Scaffold-based methods have numerous applications in cancer research, including:
- Drug Screening: Scaffolds can be used to create 3D tumor models that are more representative of actual tumors compared to 2D cultures. This allows for more accurate screening of anti-cancer drugs. - Understanding Metastasis: By mimicking the tumor microenvironment, scaffolds help researchers study how cancer cells migrate and invade other tissues. - Studying Cell-Cell Interactions: Scaffolds allow for the co-culture of different cell types, enabling the study of interactions between cancer cells and other cells in the tumor microenvironment, such as immune cells and fibroblasts. - Personalized Medicine: Patient-derived cells can be grown on scaffolds to create personalized tumor models, which can be used to test the efficacy of different treatments for individual patients.
