Home Department: Chemical Engineering
Supported by: Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
Mentor: Sarah Heilshorn, Materials Science & Engineering
Migration of cancer cells is known to correlate with extracellular matrix (ECM) stiffening; however, much of the research to date has not been able to monitor cancer progression in real time due to the use of destructive mechanical testing. Audrey is developing a novel approach that combines non-destructive soft-matter characterization with insights from polymer physics, cell biology, and mechanobiology to study the interplay between tumor progression and ECM dynamics.
Poster presented at the Stanford Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Symposium on August 24, 2017:
Multi-Scale Matrix Mechanics in Breast Cancer Models Revealed by Dynamic Light Scattering Microrheology: At the Intersection of Biology and Polymer Physics
Audrey Zhu1, Brad Krajina1, Sarah Heilshorn2
[Departments of Chemical Engineering1 and Materials Science & Engineering2, Stanford University]
