12-03 :: March/April 2012

nanotimes News in Brief

The American Institute of Physics’ journal AIP Ad- vances features a special section that examines the behavior of tumors from a physical science per- spective. The goal is to enable new ideas, grounded in the physical and mathematical sciences, to flow to the cancer research community.

Researchers create cellular automation model to study complex tumor-host role in cance. Yang Jiao and Salvatore Torquato: Diversity of dyna- mics and morphologies of invasive solid tumors, In: AIP Advances, Volume 2, Issue 1, March 2012, Article 011003 [13 pages], DOI: 10.1063/1.3697959: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3697959

1

51

Chris Cleveland, David Liao, and Robert Austin: Physics of cancer propagation: A game theory perspective In: AIP Advances, Volume 2, Issue 1, March 2012, Article 011202, DOI: 10.1063/1.3699043 [10 pages]: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3699043

SPECIAL TOPIC: PHYSICS OF CANCER / Contributed Articles on Physics of Cancer: http://aipadvances.aip.org/resource/1/aaidbi/v2/ i1?&section=special-topic-physics-of-cancer&page=1

Researchers have developed multiple tech- niques and procedures to detect cancer cells during the earliest stages of the disease or after treatment. Rafael Pérez Solano, Francisco I. Ramirez-Perez, Jorge A. Castorena-Gonzalez, Edgar Alvarado Anell, Gerardo Gutiérrez-Juárez and Luis Polo-Parada: An experimen- tal and theoretical approach to the study of the photo- acoustic signal produced by cancer cells, In: AIP Advan- ces, Volume 2, Issue 1, March 2012, Article 011102, DOI:10.1063/1.3697852 [15 pages]: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3697852

2

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have created a gut-on-a-chip microdevice lined by living human cells that mimics the structure, physiology, and me- chanics of the human intestine – even sup- porting the growth of living microbes within its luminal space.

In search of a different perspective on the phy- sics of cancer, Princeton University and Uni- versity of California, San Francisco researchers teamed up to use game theory to look for simplicity within the complexity of the dynamics of coopera- tor and cheater cells under metabolic stress condi- tions and high spatial heterogeneity.

3

As a more accurate alternative to conven- tional cell culture and animal models, the microdevice could help researchers gain new insights into inte- stinal disorders, such as Crohn‘s disease and ulcerative colitis, and also evaluate the

The gut-on-a-chip mimics complex 3D features of the in- testine in a miniaturized form. Here, blue and red liquid is pumped through the device to help visualize the upper and lower microchannels. © Harvard University