Physical Scientists at Arizona State University will Apply Laws of Physics in
Cancer Fight
12 institutions to share $22.7 million in 1st year of federal funding
TEMPE, Ariz., Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ - Instead of killing cancer cells,
researchers at Arizona State University will use the laws of physics to figure
out how to control them. And, rather than treating cancer as a disease and
seeking a cure, ASU scientists will view cancer cells as physical objects and
study them the way a physicist would, using simple variables like temperature,
pressure and force.
That fresh approach is behind a new research center at Arizona State
University - one of 12 Physical Sciences-Oncology Centers receiving some of
$22.7 million in funding this fiscal year from the National Institutes of
Health's National Cancer Institute. Each center will bring a non-traditional
approach to cancer research with the goal of developing new methods of
arresting tumor growth and metastasis.
In addition to ASU, other institutions receiving funding include: Johns
Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Northwestern University, Princeton University,
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Cornell University,
Scripps Research Institute, University of California-Berkeley, University of
Southern California and University of Texas Health Science Center.
The new Center for Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology at ASU
will receive about $1.7 million in funding for each of the first two years of
a five-year proposal. Part of the plan is the establishment of a "cancer
forum," hosted by the BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at
ASU.
"What is new about this initiative is that it is going to be tackling the root
causes of cancer on a conceptual level," says Paul Davies, a theoretical
physicist, cosmologist and astrobiologist who is leading the ASU cancer
initiative. "We want physical scientists to think about why cancer exists in
the first place. What is its role in the great biological scheme of things as
life has evolved over the last several hundred million years? Within the human
body, how does cancer behave as a physical object?"
Davies is experienced at asking these types of big questions. As director of
the BEYOND Center in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Davies' work
has focused on applying the laws of physics to the early universe, from the
first split second. He is noted for his work on the theory of quantum fields
in curved spacetime, the thermodynamics of black holes, the arrow of time, the
nature of the laws of physics and the emergence of life in the universe.
"When I first began thinking about the problem of cancer, it occurred to me
that physicists can do some pretty fancy things. If we can build the Large
Hadron Collider to find the Higgs Boson amid one trillion proton collisions,
maybe we can find clever ways of locating and zapping individual cancer cells
in the human body. So I began to get excited about the prospect of just
throwing the full panoply of toys that physicists use at the problem of
diagnosing and killing cancer cells.
"Then, I came to realize that 'think big and zap the problem' was probably not
the best way to go. A more subtle approach to really understand cancer cells
is to regard them as physical objects rather than as enemies to be destroyed,"
Davies says.
Other collaborators on the ASU team include Stuart Lindsay, a Regents'
Professor of physics and chemistry and director of the Center for Single
Molecule Biophysics at the Biodesign Institute; Deidre Meldrum, dean of the
Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and director of the Center for
Ecogenomics at the Biodesign Institute; Timothy Newman, professor of physics
and director of the Center for Biological Physics; Robert Ros, associate
professor of physics; Peiming Zhang, an associate research professor in the
Biodesign Institute; Roger Johnson, a research scientist and laboratory
manager; and Pauline Davies, a professor of practice in the Hugh Downs School
of Human Communication.
"We are also collaborating with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center,
which will provide the cell lines for us, and the Mayo Clinic, which will
provide tissue samples," Davies says.
"And, we will be looking at the mechanical properties of the cells. We have
state-of-the-art equipment to examine individual cells in suspension in three
dimensions. The problem when you look at a cell usually is that it's a slide,
it has been squashed flat and stuck to a surface, it's a two-dimensional
picture. We can examine cells in a three-dimensional suspension, we can
examine them from all sides," says Davies.
"It's well known that cancer cells get more squishy. The reason they get bent
out of shape is because of the squishiness, they become less elastic. Nobody
really knows what the reason for that is or whether this is something just to
do with the membrane of the cell or the cytoskeleton - little tubes inside the
cells that pull like ropes. We want to know what's going on in these cells.
Why they are getting squishy? How does that effect the survival chances of the
cancer cell?"
The center at ASU will be a think tank that hosts several workshops each year
on topics related to the intersection of physical science and cancer. "The
goal of the workshops is to serve as a catalyst to establish new lines of
inquiry, both theoretical and experimental," Davies says. "We are aiming for
that big conceptual breakthrough that would transform the subject, as opposed
to the slow incremental progress that's been made so far using traditional
approaches."
The center will also create a Web site to serve as a window on the research
program and to host research papers, podcasts, webcasts and news items, Davies
notes.
"The traditional approach to cancer is it is a disease to be cured. We are
taking the approach that it is part of life's intrinsic exuberance that we
wish to control," Davies says. "We don't have to cure cancer. All we have to
do is to find ways of preventing it from taking over and destroying the body
of the host."
SOURCE Arizona State University's BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in
Science
Carol Hughes, +1-480-965-6375, carol.hughes@asu.edu, ASU's College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences
