Nine out of every 10 cancer deaths occur because the disease has spread. Yet metastasis is the most poorly understood process in cancer biology.

"Its complexity has scared away many cancer scientists," notes Robert Weinberg, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

How does a cancer cell suddenly acquire the ability to jump to distant organs? Then how does the itinerant cell learn to invade the brain or liver? The lack of answers to these most basic of research questions has led to, at best, a stalemate in the war on cancer, which kills more than a half million U.S. patients annually. 

To understand metastasis, scientists say new approaches are needed that go beyond simple combat analogies. Enter M.I.T.'s new, megamillion-dollar David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, where cancer scientists and topflight engineers will try something different.

The collaborative effort may be the best means of putting to practical use the emerging (and still esoteric) field of systems biology, which studies complex interactions in biological systems.

Engineers are well-equipped to sketch so-called wiring diagrams of biochemical pathways that lead to aberrant cancer cells. Instead of focusing on a particular protein or pathway, a biomedical engineering approach opens the door to multiple levels of abstraction (from genes to the entire human body) in much the same way that electrical engineers can conceptualize the design of a box displaying moving images of Britney Spears ducking a swarm of paparazzi based on their understanding of how electrons course through a copper wire.

This could be key given that the underlying mechanisms of metastasis and resistance to cancer drugs are nothing if not complex interactions in a biological system.

As might be expected, this marriage of biology and technology is also designed to find new ways of diagnosing the disease, monitoring its progression and delivering drugs to fight it. In one approach, proteins coating injectable nano-size magnetic particles home in on tumors and can be imaged by an MRI machine.

"This generation of devices wouldn't require you to be biopsying a tumor or even know where the tumor was," says Sangeeta Bhatia, an associate professor of health sciences and technology/electrical engineering and computer science at M.I.T. who is developing such a system. Once the tumor is located, a clinician might then activate a radio signal that would release a drug bound to the particles.

M.I.T. held a groundbreaking last week for the new institute, which will replace its Center for Cancer Research that dates back to the days of President Richard Nixon's war on cancer in the early 1970s. Oil magnate David Koch, an M.I.T. alumnus and prostate cancer survivor, donated $100 million to defray most of the construction costs.

The 350,000–square foot (32,515–square meter) institute, set to open in late 2010, will feature 25 laboratories, double the number in the original center. It will be home to elite researchers like Nobelist Phillip Sharp as well as Robert Langer, perhaps the world's leading biomedical engineer.

5 Comments

1. 1. AthinaPanos 10:23 PM 3/12/08

   Finally good news! We are going to apply Systems Engineering to human body!
   As an Engineer with 20 years experience in Project Management and a passion for the holistic approach, I am confident that the results will be spectacular. But attention! We must focus on what is happening "before" and not what is happenning "after".
   If the engine of our cat is over heating is quite sure that we have no problem with the pistons. We have to check how the oil or the ventillation systems are working. And at the end probably we will discover that we are not using the appropriate heating oil or cooling water!

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2. 2. gurby1 12:34 AM 3/13/08

   The human body is an open system. The decision to move beyond pathways is welcomed but the solution does not lies in a marriage between biomedical and engineering/technology. The key is to regularly scope in and out of the system in a a time series way of studies.
   
   Rgds
   
   Gurbachan

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3. 3. Kritters 01:57 AM 3/13/08

   So, who was researching before, Jacques Clouseau, the Pink Panther? Wow, now that they are all under one roof, maybe they can concentrate! Wonder why a Parasitologist wasn't invited to the party?

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4. 4. Peter-Art 11:03 PM 3/13/08

   I would gues
   
   That a cancer cell is not like healty cells they have less binding to other cells and therefore more easily breaks loose. Afterall they form a different cellular structure, (or better they change structure), when their larger structures fail deu to internal damage or caused by starvation of some cells. A cancer cell is doing it on it's own, they are not realy a team as they have no dependencies from each other.
   
   In groups however they will release using bodies own cel language information that they require ehm .. feeding for reproduction since they can only replicate as normal cellular function have been disabled.
   
   
   Their feeding might be targeted by interfeering their cellular language, while their structural shape might be a spinn of for anti bodies. Their change of their environment i would asume would be detectable, and be spin offs for putting in antidotes better targeted, perhaps using nano tubes, instead of poisening a whole body.
   
   Or prehaps they can refine the human friend / foe cell system I hope they find something.
   
   --
   Edited by Peter-Art at 03/13/2008 4:49 PM

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5. 5. Go Yoshida 05:35 AM 3/14/08

   ES cells are similar to cancer cell, which is the reason I doubt the safety of transplantation of ES cells to damged cells to in regenerative medicine.

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