Newswise — Researchers at the University of Delaware are uncovering fundamental insights about how breast cancer spreads, discovering new strategies that could someday aid the development of better treatments, and considering how cancer survivors and their spouses/partners confront the fear of recurrence to design effective intervention strategies to support them.
Information on a few of our researchers is available below. They are available for interviews.
- April Kloxin, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and materials science and engineering, studies how the microenvironment around breast cancer cells in the body plays a role in activating these cells from a dormant state, leading to disease recurrence. Her lab is developing materials that mimic tissues in the body where late recurrences happen to understand how breast cancer cells behave and designing therapeutic interventions to prevent recurrence. Kloxin’s inspiration for this research is personal, as her mother is a breast cancer survivor.
- Emily Day, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, is engineering nanoparticles to deliver gene-regulating material to breast cancer cells. Sheis making novel nanoparticles containing special RNA molecules that can silence genes inside cancer cells that would otherwise help them grow and proliferate.
- J.P. Laurenceau, Unidel Gilchrist Sparks Chair of Psychological and Brain Sciences, is conducting research on couples coping with cancer. He monitors the daily lives of women dealing with breast cancer and their partners, through the use of electronic diaries. He has examined the link between fear of cancer recurrence and the willingness of patients and their partners/spouses to openly discuss their cancer-related concerns.
- Chemical engineering professors Millie Sullivan and Wilfred Chen are co-advising a graduate student, Rachel Lieser, who is working to develop new strategies to target suicide enzymes to inflammatory breast cancer cells.
- Shantanu Pradhan, a postdoctoral associate in biomedical engineering, is building three-dimensional models of breast tumor dormancy using hydrogels.
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