Engineering Cancer's Journey: Emerging Tools for Metastasis Modeling

The overwhelming majority of cancer-associated deaths occur due to metastasis-the spread of cells from the primary tumor to distant organs-where disseminated cells eventually colonize and destroy organ function. For metastasis to occur, a cell must acquire diverse traits, including the ability to migrate away from the primary tumor, cross an endothelial barrier, survive in circulation, re-emerge across a new endothelial barrier at a distant tissue site, and ultimately resume proliferation to colonize a foreign tissue environment. Bioengineers have recognized that tools originally developed for tissue engineering are useful for experimentally modeling cancer and metastasis. Cancer bioengineering is an emerging subfield of biomedical engineering that unifies engineering and cancer biology to better understand, diagnose, and treat cancer. The National Cancer Institute has made a bold call emphasizing the need for these bioengineered in vitro models of cancer to supplement animal models. Hypothesis testing, large discovery-based screens, and mechanistic studies of metastasis in in vitro models may help guide ensuing, targeted animal studies. In this brief, forward looking review, we discuss whether and how in vitro models can be used to study the full metastatic cascade, from invasion to outgrowth, and what must continue to be developed so that the models faithfully recapitulate the full disease progression and are approachable for scientists worldwide.