Mathbio Colloquium Thursday at 3:30 in MG2090

Professor Rob Baer, Department of Physiology, ATSU
will be speaking on:

Quantifying Vascular Network Morphology and Growth — An in vitro angiogenesis model

Abstract: Blood vessel formation begins early in development and then largely ceases with only a few exceptions in adults. However, there is growing recognition that several diseases are associated with significant pathology angiogenesis. Importantly, it has been recognized that blood vessel pathology in cancer plays a crucial role in promoting both tumor growth and metastasis. This seminar will review some of the basic physiology related to angiogenesis, and talk about some work we have been doing with Truman students in the Mathbio Program. Our goal has been to develop and quantitatively assess an in vitro model in which endothelial cells spontaneously organize into vessel-like networks on an artificial basement membrane called Matrigel™. The hope is that such models can be utilized for high-throughput screening off new cancer chemotherapeutic agents. To this end, we have studied network formation in the presence of several pro- and anti- angiogenesis signaling molecules and after exposure to spent-media from melanoma cells.